Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me • Hacker News Board

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#41

Post by OoTheNigerian » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:32 PM UTC

mlapida wrote: post #37

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #33

Excuse me, before we get all excited, where did Rebecca say that she is from Nigeria? Or are all internet scams now called 'Nigerian scams'? The number of times Nigeria was used in that post, you would think the Nigerian flag and Rebecca's Nigerian passport accompanied the emails.

The shipping address?

Well, it was never mentioned.

In addition, because there are a lot of scams that seem to originate from Nigeria (not all that say they're Nigerian are), the author wonders why people should not be suspicious of ALL Nigerians like they are of fake FBI notices.

Interestingly, that paragraph is the most hilighted of this thread and no one thinks that type of blatant sterotyping and discrimination is odd.

As a Nigerian, it makes me really sad and uncomfortable.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#42

Post by njharman » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:33 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

This 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.

Living your life in fear of what people (crooks or not) may do is a sad existence.

Everything could go badly, it's waste of life to worry about the insignificant / unlikely things.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#43

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:38 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

This 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.

Actually, wasting the scammers' time (at a minimal cost to you) is actually one of the better ways to combat this scam.

The entire scheme is based on the scammers avoiding baiting people who will catch on to the scheme (hence the obvious signs of scammage -- they're a reverse intelligence task), while snaring people who are likely to fall prey.

http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/study--obvious-nigeri...

This reduces their time cost, which is fairly high, as each mark must be navigated through the scam.

The ideal solution would be to create an AI which is sufficiently good to imitate a stupid, scammable individual, tarbaiting the scammers into wasting their time.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#44

Post by DanBC » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:43 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #36

sliverstorm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Internet has been around for fifteen years, and PayPal has been around for more than ten. I don't think either of them qualify as "new" anymore. Most people get scammed not because the technologies are new, but because they have been using those technologies irresponsibly, i.e. without educating themselves about their dangers first. They simply want to reap the benefits, and end up losing their money.

> The Internet has been around for fifteen years

WWW has been around for 20 years. But it's only recently that people have always on cable modems and active content.

> without educating themselves about their dangers first.

HN is full of stories of well funded, international businesses, with considerable sums of cash at risk, who do stupid insecure things. If they can't get it right why should Joe Sixpack be expected to do any better?

Email inboxes are full of hoaxes about supposed dangers - most of them are garbage.

I'm interested to see what kind of help there is for people who want to learn how to protect themselves on the Internet.

(http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Internet-Fraud.shtml)

That site has comprehensive information. It's lousy. Look how much stuff people have to wade through.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#45

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

njharman wrote: post #42

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

This 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.

Living your life in fear of what people (crooks or not) may do is a sad existence. Everything could go badly, it's waste of life to worry about the insignificant / unlikely things.

You missed a word there, it was 'taunting'.

It has nothing to do with fear per se, it has to do with risk. When you taunt some one, or some thing, you invoke an anger response in them. The thing is, you don't know what they are capable of when they are angry. So that is the risk.

I've reported dozens of Nigerian scammers in my day. Yahoo [1] used to have an email address for reporting them if they were using a Yahoo email account. I've also replied to them with a carbon copy to the FBI 419 abuse email address. I am even polite about it. It doesn't escalate the emotion.

Most scammers simply ignore you once you've reported them, occasionally they will swear at you and then ignore you. But it ends there.

[1] http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index;_ylt=AgcN27QhFLqwMA_Cfh52Fxl5...

[2] http://www.fbi.gov/scams-safety/fraud

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#46

Post by greenyoda » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:46 PM UTC

denzil_correa wrote: post #15

It was a great read and a nice way to give it back. Btw, after the last few chat messages I get a creaky feeling that Rebecca is a dude!

Yeah, "suck my divck" was a dead giveaway. Not something that a female is likely to say.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#47

Post by timrogers » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:46 PM UTC

"If people in the U.S. aren’t suspicious of...Nigerians in general"

HN is a placed for reasoned argument, not stereotypes. Not Nigerians are scammers.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#48

Post by mitjak » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:47 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #34

patdennis wrote: post #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 us…

God help us if the scammers ever find someone who can write correct English. I know many people get caught by these scams, and I suspect that the numbers would increase if the wording was improved a bit. There's a metaphor about conversions and copy-writing and startups in there somewhere.

They have already. I regularly get properly phrased phishing emails from "PayPal". A few times I even got some from the banks that I use. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not, but the only thing that gave it away was the phishy URL.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#49

Post by lotharbot » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:48 PM UTC

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #33

Excuse me, before we get all excited, where did Rebecca say that she is from Nigeria? Or are all internet scams now called 'Nigerian scams'? The number of times Nigeria was used in that post, you would think the Nigerian flag and Rebecca's Nigerian passport accompanied the emails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_scam

One of the most common early internet scams was about money from a deposed Nigerian prince, and a fairly large percentage of these scammers are in Nigeria (as well as the US, UK, Netherlands, and Spain.) The name "Nigerian scam" became a generic term to refer to this type of scam, particularly in pop culture.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#50

Post by RegEx » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 9:48 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #34

patdennis wrote: post #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 us…

God help us if the scammers ever find someone who can write correct English. I know many people get caught by these scams, and I suspect that the numbers would increase if the wording was improved a bit. There's a metaphor about conversions and copy-writing and startups in there somewhere.

The poor spelling probably increases the conversion rate from people who make the first reply. The nigerian prince and poor-spelling spammers are dead giveaways to a spam. If you filter out people who know about these cliches, you increase the likelihood that the responder will give you money.