After seeing the stickers I was hoping the OP actually sent the computer with an undercover style backdoor installed so he could remotely control the computer, e.g. take shots with webcam, screenshots, install key logger, etc. That would have been incredibly amusing.
Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
21–30 of 146 posts
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#22"If people in the U.S. aren’t suspicious of free money, PayPal payments that look fake, the absence of a payment in their account, fake emails from PayPal’s FBI department or just Nigerians in general, then they deserve to have their money taken from them."
I could easily see my parents falling for this. I don't think they deserve to have their money taken.
Although, to be fair, I doubt my parents could set up and use a Paypal account. So they've got that going for them.
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#23"If people in the U.S. aren’t suspicious of free money, PayPal payments that look fake, the absence of a payment in their account, fake emails from PayPal’s FBI department or just Nigerians in general, then they deserve to have their money taken from them." I could easily see my parents falling for this. I don't think they deserve to have their money taken. Although, to be fair, I doubt my parents could set up and us…
Agreed on all counts. To many people, the internet and all are so new and unfamiliar, they have absolutely ZERO context to recognize fake-looking PayPal payments or emails from PayPal's FBI department. To them, they are still completely lost- you can't expect them to recognize a scam.
As for being suspicious of free money, I think most people generally would be, but relax their misgivings when something appears to be legitimate- that is to say, any escapes they are aware of appear to be covered. The scammer, therefore, takes advantage of the victim's lack of knowledge of the escapes in an electronic age.
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#24Nice job there. It is easy to forget though that we're all pretty tech savvy here on hacker news. There's a ton of people out there that would see that government logo and get all panicked and confused. Even a good high school friend of mine who never got very good at computers (he's a butcher) fell for a Nigerian scam. Thankfully he was only out a couple of hundred bucks, but damn, we need a way to stop it.
> Even a good high school friend of mine who never got very good at computers (he's a butcher) fell for a Nigerian scam. Please don't insult butchers. Not falling for a Nigerian scam has nothing to do with "[being] good at computers". It requires nothing more than the level-headed application of logic and reason.
I think you're reading the quote wrong. It could just as easily have been written thusly:
> Even a good high school friend of mine who never got very good at computers (he doesn't work with or in tech) fell for a Nigerian scam.
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#25More records of people baiting Nigerian scammers: http://419eater.com/html/letters.htm . People on http://www.419eater.com/ lead these “4-1-9” scammers on wild goose chases deliberately to waste their time, in the hopes of distracting them from attacking other people and also just having fun.
The one where the guy got the scammer carve a C64 out of a block of wood is my favorite. It turned out pretty good.
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#26This can go badly of course, taunting crooks is never the safe policy no matter how tempting it can be. The thing is, they are crooks, so they have already decided that they are willing to break the rules, what you don't know is how many they are willing to break.
> they are willing to break the rules, what you don't know is how many they are willing to break // Isn't this true of almost everyone in society - whether it's jaywalking, or [minor] speeding, or not declaring income, or under-age drinking, or taking a sick day, or 'borrowing' a ream of paper from the office, or ... My point I guess is that scamming people online doesn't seem to be a gateway to violent crime or anyt…
Well, I suppose you could argue that the extra risk is the knowledge they have gathered as part of being a scammer. Knowledge being power and all that. A jaywalker doesn't know your phone number, where you live, and where your wife works.
Hopefully the scammer doesn't either, but hopefully this still conveys the point.
Edit: There's a difference too; jaywalking et al do not implicitly harm other people. I don't know all the legal intricacies, but theft (scams) is different.
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#27Hilarious. But it sucks that the author draws this conclusion: "If people in the U.S. aren’t suspicious of free money, PayPal payments that look fake, [...], or just Nigerians in general , then they deserve to have their money taken from them." I feel like we need a tumblr to post blatantly obvious scams like these. Maybe that would help the common folk be better at identifying them.
Someone actually did a paper on why every one of these scams seems to come from Nigeria[1]. If you're not at least suspicious when something like this comes "from Nigeria" at this point, there's probably no helping you. [1] http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/167719/WhyFromNigeria.pdf
Thanks for linking that paper, fascinating, the thought had never occurred to me.
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#28Nice job there. It is easy to forget though that we're all pretty tech savvy here on hacker news. There's a ton of people out there that would see that government logo and get all panicked and confused. Even a good high school friend of mine who never got very good at computers (he's a butcher) fell for a Nigerian scam. Thankfully he was only out a couple of hundred bucks, but damn, we need a way to stop it.
Being tech-savvy is only a small part of it.
Anybody who knows how the US legal system works should understand that there's no way they'd be getting a letter from the FBI encouraging them on behalf of a buyer to ship a product.
And anybody with an elementary school grasp of the English language has got to recognize that whoever wrote that letter is certainly not an FBI official, and probably not even a native English speaker.
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#29This can go badly of course, taunting crooks is never the safe policy no matter how tempting it can be. The thing is, they are crooks, so they have already decided that they are willing to break the rules, what you don't know is how many they are willing to break.
> they are willing to break the rules, what you don't know is how many they are willing to break // Isn't this true of almost everyone in society - whether it's jaywalking, or [minor] speeding, or not declaring income, or under-age drinking, or taking a sick day, or 'borrowing' a ream of paper from the office, or ... My point I guess is that scamming people online doesn't seem to be a gateway to violent crime or anyt…
Yup. And besides, it's an easy buck from some chumps, not a 1000$/day job you can get by buying my book and following my internet unlock steps!
Your Parent is insane to think that simply breaking rules means people have no ethics or morals themselves. Everyone is a dynamic person, and IMO someone who screws people within the confines of the law can be just as bad if not worse.
Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me
#30If you like that, have a look at http://www.419eater.com/ where there's a large community of people doing all sorts of scammer pranks. Obligatory warning: will decrease productivity for the rest of the day :-)