Kitboga is the Internet alias of an American YouTuber whose content primarily focuses on scam baiting against scams conducted over the phone.

His YouTube channel has over 2 million subscribers.

In mid-2017, Kitboga found out that his grandmother had fallen victim to many scams designed to prey on the elderly, both online and in person. He then discovered “Lenny”, a loop of vague pre-recorded messages that scam baiters play during calls with the aim of convincing the scammer that there is a real person on the phone without providing any useful information to the scammer. After seeing these videos uploaded to YouTube, he decided to have a go himself.

. While he started out streaming for his friends on Twitch, his viewership soon started growing beyond his immediate circles, eventually leading to the growth in popularity he has experienced since starting his channel. Kitboga hopes that by wasting scammers’ time, he can prevent them from scamming others, while also providing a source of entertainment and education to his viewers.[5]

In March 2020, with the growing prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kitboga started baiting scammers who were selling an essential oil which they dishonestly claimed was a cure for COVID-19, following a warning from the United States Federal Trade Commission to consumers to be alert for coronavirus-related scams.[6]

Technique[edit]

In his Youtube videos, Kitboga engages in scam baiting with several types of scammers.

Typically technical support scammers, refund scammers, tax  scammers, social security scammers, and more.

To misdirect scammers away from his real identity, as well as for viewer entertainment, Kitboga often poses as a number of different characters during his videos, including a grandmother named either Edna, Vera, Matilda, or Bernice  a Russian man named Vicktor Viktoor.

He always plays characters who know little about IT and can be easily cheated by the scammer.

Kitboga plays along with the scammer, misdirecting, apparently making mistakes again and again and so on.

At the end of bait calls, Kitboga sometimes turns off his voice changer and reveals that he has been scambaiting.

Usually that results in a hangup, but some are so dumb and so used to lying that they carry pretending it is real.

You’ll find Kitboga’s videos at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm22FAXZMw1BaWeFszZxUKw

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.