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Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

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Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#61

Post by graue »

astral303 wrote: post #35
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…

+1. Plenty of people in the US have a subpar grasp of English (and yet are not retarded). For example, my dad was not born in the US, but has a Masters in Electrical Engineering and used to work on power grid systems. He's a smart guy. However, it took him a good amount of time to recognize phishing e-mails, some of it requiring my guidance. For example, it's not easy to identify Misused Capitalizations, or to pick u…

I'd still think paying $100 more than the asking price (with no explanation as to why) would be a strong clue something is amiss in this case.

But you're probably right that the use of English and the FBI enforcement letter are obvious only to a subset of people who grew up in a Western, Anglophone culture.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#62

Post by enraged_camel »

RegEx wrote: post #53
enraged_camel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I'm interested to see what kind of help there is for people who want to learn how to protect themselves on the Internet. What kind of help is there for people who want to learn to protect themselves in real life ? Does the fact that there is no comprehensive resource somehow remove one's burden to learn anyway?

You're extremely grumpy. Blaming the victim is not some brave, heroic concept. People can imagine what it looks like to be in physical danger, and instinct can help them avoid the situations to some degree. It's hard to imagine what it's like being in an unsafe situation on the internet.

>>Blaming the victim is not some brave, heroic concept.

Blaming the victim is bad only if you believe that blame is a zero sum game. Unfortunately, it is not. If you walk down a dark alleyway in New York at night alone and get mugged, the mugger is guilty of mugging you, but you're also guilty of being a silly goose. You don't gain immunity to blame simply because you were the victim.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#63

Post by weaksauce »

RegEx wrote: post #50
DanBC wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you imagine how many emails that they would have to field if they were, at a first pass, a convincing forgery? It's almost certainly used as a low pass filter to only prey on the ones likely to fall for it in the long run.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#64

Post by lotharbot »

anonymouz wrote: post #56
lotharbot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very first paragraph of the Wikipedia page: "Nigerian scams (also called Nigerian 419 scams), are a type of advance fee fraud and one of the most common types of confidence frauds in which the victim is defrauded for monetary gain.". The scam the blog author describes is not of this type. Nigerian scam refers specifically to the type of scam where people want your help "transfering large sums of money out of their co…

The particular incident that triggered the first use of the word "Nigeria" on the page in question was being fake-sent $500 instead of $400. This is a sign of a common variant of the scam, where extra fake-money is sent, and then the fake-buyer asks for a partial refund (see the Variants section of the Wikipedia page, particularly the first paragraph under "Online sales and rentals".)

The scam eventually took a different direction, but in the early going it definitely fit the stereotype.

So, to fully answer the question from the earlier poster: "Nigerian Scam" is a generic term referring to a broad category of scams. This particular scam looked like one of the common variants in its early stages.

EDIT: to even more fully answer that question, it's not fair that Nigerians have been stereotyped with the label "scammer" because of this sort of scam. I'd prefer a more neutral term, but I don't know of a good one.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#65

Post by pav3l »

pseudonym wrote: post #19
ipince wrote: post #4

Hilarious. 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

HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4136016

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#66

Post by baddox »

CrazedGeek wrote: post #8

Very (probably unintentionally) similar to: http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/

I was wondering if the author has never heard of the P-P-P-Powerbook, or purposefully avoided citing it as a reference (e.g. the idea to deliver a fake laptop and the customs fee).

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#67

Post by outworlder »

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.

It is said that the p-p-p-powerbook guy disappeared some time after, but I could never verify it.

Overall though, I think the danger is pretty low, assuming you do not reveal your identity at any point.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#68

Post by jlgreco »

anonymouz wrote: post #56
lotharbot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very first paragraph of the Wikipedia page: "Nigerian scams (also called Nigerian 419 scams), are a type of advance fee fraud and one of the most common types of confidence frauds in which the victim is defrauded for monetary gain.". The scam the blog author describes is not of this type. Nigerian scam refers specifically to the type of scam where people want your help "transfering large sums of money out of their co…

It may be interesting to note that merely the term "419 scam" implies Nigeria as well, since the 419 is referencing a specific section in the Nigerian Criminal Code.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#69

Post by sliverstorm »

enraged_camel wrote: post #62
RegEx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're extremely grumpy. Blaming the victim is not some brave, heroic concept. People can imagine what it looks like to be in physical danger, and instinct can help them avoid the situations to some degree. It's hard to imagine what it's like being in an unsafe situation on the internet.

>>Blaming the victim is not some brave, heroic concept. Blaming the victim is bad only if you believe that blame is a zero sum game. Unfortunately, it is not. If you walk down a dark alleyway in New York at night alone and get mugged, the mugger is guilty of mugging you, but you're also guilty of being a silly goose. You don't gain immunity to blame simply because you were the victim.

How 'bout if you just moved to New York from backcountry Idaho?

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#70

Post by jlgreco »

enraged_camel wrote: post #62
RegEx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're extremely grumpy. Blaming the victim is not some brave, heroic concept. People can imagine what it looks like to be in physical danger, and instinct can help them avoid the situations to some degree. It's hard to imagine what it's like being in an unsafe situation on the internet.

>>Blaming the victim is not some brave, heroic concept. Blaming the victim is bad only if you believe that blame is a zero sum game. Unfortunately, it is not. If you walk down a dark alleyway in New York at night alone and get mugged, the mugger is guilty of mugging you, but you're also guilty of being a silly goose. You don't gain immunity to blame simply because you were the victim.

To expand on that (since I find in this topic it is necessary to be explicit), since blame is not zero-sum assigning an amount of blame to the victim should in no way be seen to reduce the blame or fault the perpetrator receives.

In other words, since blame is not zero-sum, placing some blame on the victim is not a defense of the perpetrator.

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