• The first rules is to have a good anti-virus software running on your system and do keep the virus definitions ready.
• Make sure you don't believe in anything, which a scammer tells you until you know it is true. In case scammer tells you "here is my photo" you could argue it isn't.
• Never go to meet any scammer in person, regardless of their location given. As most scammers are pretty cheat artists, there had been many cases of muggings, kidnappings and also murder of people who had gone to meet with 419 scammers.

• Scam baiters claim that a helpful spin-off of 419 scams baiting has been the contact of false and fraudulent "lottery," "banking" and "credit" services that are often created by the 419 spam senders to further their scams and make them seem legitimate.
• Some of the scam baiters specialize in hunting down and "killing" these fake sites in order to get rid of one of the tools in the scammers' arsenal.

There are very few known cases 419 scammer discovering their real identity of a scam baiter. Since baiters are always using fake e-mail accounts and is careful not to make public any personal details. So baiters may claim, which scammers have visited the fake addresses they gave them. scambaiting could also be considered a type of smart taking operation, even though most scam baits in 419 scam baiting results in actually trying to waste time instead of catching the scammer and might not fit the definition of a smart operation.

• Since 2002 over a hundred thousand frauds warned per year and not to forget the educational role. Thousands of scammers were frustrated.
• Knowledgeable and experienced scammers stopped email to communicate, changing to snail mail telephone landlines and door to door tactics.
• Scam combating recognized by most of the public until law enforcement shows they take care of the problem.