Community isn’t just helpful in the fight against phishing, fraud, and online scams. It’s essential. When organizations collaborate and share intelligence, digital brand protection becomes not only more effective, but measurably impactful. In June, the Netcraft team observed first-hand the power of bringing together many of the smartest leaders in security, targeting a really difficult security problem, and effectively taking down scams and scammers. But the story of this community didn’t start in June. To understand the power of this community, let’s go back nine months. 

In 2024, Netcraft participated in the Global Anti-Scam Summit in Washington DC, hosted at Amazon HQ. This community features many of the world’s largest brands, governments, law enforcement agencies, and legislators, who are aligned in their mission to disrupt the increasing global plague of scams. During this event, one session featured how the teams at Amazon, AnyDesk, and Match Group are taking their fight to scammers in meaningful and unprecedented ways. Following the session, I connected with Matt Caldwell, Director of Brand Strategy from AnyDesk, and started talking about ways to work together and disrupt scams. It wasn’t long before we started talking about the People’s Call Center and how to join the fight.

Figure 1. The People’s Call Center main area at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London, UK.

The People’s Call Center

The People’s Call Center brings together the brightest minds in scambaiting to waste scammer time and fight back against the growing plague of phishing, fraud, scams, and the criminal syndicates that support them. Matt and I discussed how to make this time different — the team at AnyDesk has actively worked to eliminate fraud on their platform, adding kill switches and other tools that allow them to disrupt abuse, but what about off-platform abuse? In order to function, scams need emails, phone numbers, and of course, URLs. This is where Netcraft comes in. 

Our primary goal? Disrupt the scammers’ core infrastructure and conduct live takedowns. This not only wastes their time; it dismantles their ability to scam others. It was an ambitious idea because, quite frankly, a live takedown presents challenges. Even with industry-leading takedown times of 2.1 hours, we wanted to orchestrate takedowns in connection with scambaiter activity and takedown sites in real-time and on time for maximum effect. So we brought our a-team to the table to ensure that when we needed a site taken down, it happened as quickly as possible. More to come on that.

Figure 2. The Netcraft team after a successful day disrupting scammers.

Onto the event itself. Every detail was perfect. We have to give Matt and the AnyDesk team major kudos for organizing a fantastic experience for all involved. From the event badges to the Red Bull gaming sphere, this event was everything you’d imagine when you get 40 of the world’s most renowned minds in scambaiting and cybercrime disruption in the same room for three days.

Figure 3. The event badges with screen to swap out logos from each of the participating channels and organizations.

You can watch the videos yourself (see a few of our favorites below), but to highlight some of the work from the Netcraft team over the course of the event, we thought we’d share a peek behind the scenes.

TL;DR: Scamming Scammers is a BLAST… and Effective 😎

It’s rewarding to know that every second spent on the phone with a scammer is a moment they can’t speak with a real victim. But this time it was different. We weren’t just there wasting time. After Phase I of “Scam the Scammers” concluded, the scambaiters onsite were informed of exactly what Netcraft would need to start our investigation, find the core infrastructure, and take it down. 

So while the scambaiters did their thing, we did ours. And as always, we did it the Netcraft way — backed by evidence, confidence, and validation to ensure we were only disrupting verified malicious content. We watched conversations unfold with scammers while confirming through Netcraft’s tools and systems, and when the time was right, we deployed countermeasures. 

How could we orchestrate disruptions with such precision? Since the early days of Netcraft, we’ve known that effective takedowns require partnership with infrastructure providers. Our industry-leading takedown times are not by chance; they come from years of relationship building, direct connections, and world-class automation. In these instances, our onsite team had behind-the-scenes conversations with our provider contacts, telling them exactly when to execute the takedown. 

To see what this looks like in real life, check out this video from Ben (@PleasantGreen). We teamed up with him to take out a brand impersonation of Jim’s Klassic Klunkers, a business that was no longer in operation. Like many scams, these threat actors find vulnerabilities, in this case, a URL and business no longer in operation. The scammers give the site some life, stealing videos from other websites, even adding their own voiceover, and then take payment for a car that doesn’t exist. So, we took out the site to protect future victims. When the scammer told Ben, “You’re wasting my time,” the only smile bigger than Ben’s was ours. 

The Netcraft Way — More than Whack-a-Mole

The People’s Call Center is a testament to the positive impact that unifying against a common problem creates. Millions of people will see these videos, gaining awareness of these scams and many more just like them. It provides a reminder that will help viewers think twice the next time they see a suspicious text or an email with an offer that’s too good to be true. It helps us all better identify and more quickly recognize phishing and smishing scams. 

Jim’s Klassic Klunker’s was just one of many scams taken down during our three days at the People’s Call Center. From investment scams with more than 8,000 active connections to profiles used in ticketing scams, the Netcraft team did what we do every day, dismantle the world’s criminal infrastructure to make the internet a safer place for you, for me, and for billions of people worldwide. Until next year’s PCC, we’ll keep doing just that. 

To wrap up, I would like to extend a special thank you to our customers. It’s only with their partnership that we get to do this every day. At Netcraft, we perform a takedown every 8.5 seconds. I’ll save you the math, that’s more than 2.5 million takedowns last year alone. However, that’s only possible by collaborating with the world's best brands, banks, and governments, who take on the fight against scammers every day. If you’re curious about how Netcraft brings the same tools, technology, and tenacious attitude to protecting your brand, we should talk. 

Special thanks to AnyDesk, Jim Browning, Scammer Payback, and the rest of the PCC 2025 team!