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Interesting Study. There is also a related question addressed on Quora (circa 2010), on why these scams almost always originate from Nigeria and not else where. The geo-political reasons are quite interesting too http://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-wire-fraud-scams-origina...
I don't have a Facebook page and I'd rather not use my Google account. Is there a way for me to read that answer without creating one?
Interesting Study. There is also a related question addressed on Quora (circa 2010), on why these scams almost always originate from Nigeria and not else where. The geo-political reasons are quite interesting too http://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-wire-fraud-scams-origina...
I don't have a Facebook page and I'd rather not use my Google account. Is there a way for me to read that answer without creating one?
That abstract was the most convoluted way possible of saying: "because they want dumb people".
Reminds of of this later and somewhat funnier article about the "one weird trick" ads: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_... They reached the same conclusion and in that case, I can believe it's correct because those ads cost money, so must bring in more revenue, or they'd have stopped a long time ago. In the case of 419 scams, a large proportion of the scammers may not be that sophisticated…
Could be a case of evolutionary dynamics at play in the system. IF the typos mattered, then dumb scammers would have been weeded out.
Conversely, if typos help, then this phenomenon may actually have encouraged dumb scammers and weeded out literate ones that never thought to misspell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have a Facebook page and I'd rather not use my Google account. Is there a way for me to read that answer without creating one?
You can click away from the modal to close it.
But the answers above solved that problem. Thanks.
Reminds of of this later and somewhat funnier article about the "one weird trick" ads: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_... They reached the same conclusion and in that case, I can believe it's correct because those ads cost money, so must bring in more revenue, or they'd have stopped a long time ago. In the case of 419 scams, a large proportion of the scammers may not be that sophisticated…
>In the case of 419 scams, a large proportion of the scammers may not be that sophisticated. It's entirely possible they really are just as dumb and incapable of spelling as a naive layperson would assume. The fact that "scam baiting" is a thing provides some evidence of that, although it's likely that many of those reports are fake as well. Could be a case of evolutionary dynamics at play in the system. IF the typos…
OR, those who were able to produce high-quality grammatical English were able to find better jobs than running 419 scams.
Including typos in the spam messages falls in this same category. If seeing typos in an "official communication" triggers your alarm bells then you probably would not fall for whatever scamola it's a part of. It'd be in their interests to get you to drop off early.
You probably won't fall for it, but there is a still a chance...
Can we have a [2012] on the title, please?