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Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

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Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#71

Post by theorique »

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.

REBECCA DID NOT SAY SHE WAS FROM NIGERIA.

HOWEVER, MY LATE FATHER GOD BLESS HIM AZIZ ABDOULAYE WAS FINANCE MINISTER OF NIGERIA CRUELLY ASSASINATED BY THE CORRUPT OIL COMPANY AND HAS LEFT ME AND MY WIDOW MOTHER $75 MILLION AMERICA US DOLLAR IN HIS FORTUNE IN LONDON BANK ACCOUNT.

KNOWING YOU ARE AN HONEST BUSINESS MAN OF AMERICA AND GOT YOUR NAME FROM A TRUSTED ASSOCIATE GOD BLESS HIM I WISH YOU TO BE MY AGENT BUSINESS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. FOR THIS YOU SHALL HAVE FEE OF TEN PERCENT OF THE MONEYS SECURED FOR ME BY MY LATE FATHER

...

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#72

Post by yohui »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #41
mlapida wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

This suggests it was the address:

"On the customs form, I put the value at $500 and the description said “cardboard art.” I’m not completely sure of this, but I think Nigerians have to pay a small percentage of the value to customs, so putting a high price on the customs form hopefully cost them a little money."

That bit about the customs fee wouldn't make sense otherwise.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#73

Post by jlgreco »

sliverstorm wrote: post #69
enraged_camel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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?

I would say that a criminal is equally guilty if they commit a crime in a dark alley NYC or if they commit a crime in backcountry Idaho.

If I replace my bicycle u-lock with a nice hefty rope and start lashing my bike to whatever object seems solid at the time (this is a concept that actually appeals to me), then I should receive some blame when my bike gets inevitably stolen. However the bicycle thief is no more nor less a thief.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#74

Post by ChuckMcM »

outworlder wrote: post #67
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.

Sadly perhaps but I know people that if I give them an email address they can turn that into an actual person + personal details. Not cheaply but they are scarily good at it. One of the side effects of no privacy / tracking etc etc is this.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#75

Post by unix-dude »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #41
mlapida wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I don't believe the author meant that people should be suspicious of "Nigerians" in general, but rather that they should be suspicious of Nigerians when in the context of an online monetary transaction.

The sad truth is that a lot of scammers originate from Nigeria. Therefore, it makes sense to be extra cautious when engaging in financial transactions with someone who is in within Nigeria.

I highly doubt the author was implying any sort of racist sentiment.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#76

Post by sharkweek »

chc wrote: post #57
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.

I've heard that for many scams it's actually the opposite: They intentionally throw in huge warning flags so that the people who initially "bite" are less likely to have second thoughts later on, and thus the scammer wastes less time chasing false leads. They're basically prequalifying you as a good mark. (There is a good lesson about marketing here too — theoretically "perfect" copy or design may not be ideal for yo…

here's a source that says something similar: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/428151/why_nigerian_...

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#77

Post by tammer »

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…

I concur. My parents were recently duped by botspam sent from an estranged aunt's hacked aol account. The message was one sentence, two words of which were CLICK HERE. My mother spent a whole day researching the reality content farm it linked to, thinking something was happening to some family real-estate.

Maybe there needs to be some sort of Internet-wide PSA about this kind of thing?

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#78

Post by RegEx »

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.

You're expanding on my point exactly. The Internet does not have such an obvious dark alley. You can copy HTML/CSS, have anchors with a different href than shown, and a lot of sly things. I hate using anologies when talking to hackers, so I didn't use the alleyway example even though I was thinking it.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#79

Post by akldfgj »

mitjak wrote: post #48
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.

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.

Those are different. Phishes strive for perfection, because they win as soon as you log in to the fake site.

These "long con" 419 scams need to rebuff intelligent/savvy people and only attract rubes.

Re: Nigerian scammer gets a laptop from me

#80

Post by Axsuul »

roryokane wrote: post #6

More 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.

Another good one was getting a scammer to hand write the entire first book of the Harry Potter series.
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