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Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

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Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#31

Post by estel »

Ygg2 wrote: post #28
dsrguru wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opportunity cost. If you can devote a few hours a day to each of, say, three gullible marks, you have a much greater chance of a payout than devoting a minute to each of 500 random marks.

Wait, what? These messages are sent en masse, and they aren't really hard to write up.

That's referring to the time that the scammer needs if the recipient falls for their bait and initiates contact.

You only want the truly gullible to send that first email, or it would be a waste of time for the scammer to talk to all the people who wouldn't wire transfer their money a few days/weeks later.

Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#32

Post by tartuffe78 »

sdfghhasdf wrote: post #18
sehrope wrote: post #2

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.

Why is it in there best interest for you to drop off early? You probably won't fall for it, but there is a still a chance...

It's like how they say certain intro classes for majors are difficult to weed out students who would eventually drop out if they reached harder classes. The logic there is students aren't wasting their time taking classes they won't use when they switch majors, and the classes won't be filled up before students who will make it all the way can enroll.

This way the scammer isn't doing a back and forth for 2-3 emails with those who would eventually realize its a scam. They immediately weed them out so they are spending time on those who will payoff.

Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#33

Post by the_af »

notahacker wrote: post #10

I can't help wondering what percentage of the victims of the vanilla "Nigerian scam" over the internet are in developing countries nowadays where lawyers and bankers generally do use free webmail accounts for their correspondence, sending and receiving money via Western Union is quite normal, and requests for funds to bribe an official barely raise an eyebrow.

Don't get too comfortable with that thought. At least a few years ago, plenty of victims came from developed countries such as the US and the UK. My guess is that it's caused by a combination of extreme gullibility and greed, and has little to do with the development level of your country.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/U-S-Internet-fraud-at-al...

Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#35

Post by meowface »

sehrope wrote: post #2

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.

I imagine there still needs to be some balance though. There's likely a set of people who may fall for the scam even if it's ridiculous, but if made slightly more ridiculous they suddenly would become more suspicious.

Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#36

Post by hughw »

As a point of interest: Nigerian scam letters predate the internet. In the eighties and nineties, colleagues in the oil and gas industry, and I, received frequent postal letters, postmarked Nigeria. One memorable one I received from a high official in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, requested I keep his proposal a secret so "that my image may not be dented." We assumed they combed the Oil and Gas Directory, or the Geophysical Directory, to obtain our names. Perhaps these original, truly Nigerian scams, were less sophisticated than the later Internet imitators, since targeting technical professionals isn't targeting the dumbest of the dumb. Or, the rich veins they mined were not yet depleted.

Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#37

Post by dsrguru »

estel wrote: post #31
Ygg2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? These messages are sent en masse, and they aren't really hard to write up.

That's referring to the time that the scammer needs if the recipient falls for their bait and initiates contact. You only want the truly gullible to send that first email, or it would be a waste of time for the scammer to talk to all the people who wouldn't wire transfer their money a few days/weeks later.

Right, all contact after the first email has to be tailored to their responses. Even gullible marks usually need hours or days (at minimum) of building rapport before they're actually comfortable enough to be conned into executing a transaction. If conning people into directly handing you cash were automatable like phishing, you'd see a lot more con artists and a lot less of other crimes.

Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#38

Post by S4M »

One thing I have been wanting to do for a long time about Nigerian like scams, but never got around doing it, was the following: 1. create some bait email accounts from gmail, yahoo, and so on, and expose them somewhere on internet so they get harvested by scammers. 2. write a dumb program that is able to do some primitive parsing of the emails from the scammers, and reply to them. For example, let's say the email from the scammer is:

    Dear friend,
        I am the widow of the former Prime Minister of Nigeria and I need your help to get out of Nigeria where my life is threatened, along with the  $50M currently in my bank account. If you help me I am willing to give you 30% of that money, please reply me to see how we can proceed.
    Regards,
    Mrs Mary Noscam
The program would have just to reply something like:

    Dear Mary,
    I am very interested to help you, how can I help you to get out of Nigeria?
    Regards,
    Mr John Victim.
The point would be to make the scammer spend 10 minutes to read the reply and answer to it. After couple of emails, he will probably realize that he has been wasting his time with a bot, and just move on, but with lots of emails responding, he will have much less time to deal with actual victims, making his time worthless. I think writing a bot that is able to reply to the scammer is quite doable, since:

    1. There are example of bots having actual conversation, such as SHRDLU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU) that was recently submitted here.
    2. The answer doesn't have to be very elaborate.
Now I think I got blocked by the fact of having to make the bot be able to receive and send emails... maybe I will start that project some day...

Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#39

Post by kinkora »

S4M wrote: post #38

One thing I have been wanting to do for a long time about Nigerian like scams, but never got around doing it, was the following: 1. create some bait email accounts from gmail, yahoo, and so on, and expose them somewhere on internet so they get harvested by scammers. 2. write a dumb program that is able to do some primitive parsing of the emails from the scammers, and reply to them. For example, let's say the email fr…

I can't remember what the website is exactly and I am currently at work now so I won't be able to google it up but there was a person that use to do this except that he didn't use a bot but "bait" the scammers himself.

It is utterly hilarious. What he does is he replies to a "scam email" and most of the scammers will do anything once they see an actual human being replying to their spam email. He obviously leads them on and his signature move is to always try to get the scammer to post a picture of themselves with a card held up (for verification purposes of course) and the cards usually say stupid things like "ilikebukake". He collates all the emails, replies, pictures, etc and puts it up on the internet.

When I get home later, I will try and dig that site up.

Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)

#40

Post by S4M »

kinkora wrote: post #39
S4M wrote: post #38

One thing I have been wanting to do for a long time about Nigerian like scams, but never got around doing it, was the following: 1. create some bait email accounts from gmail, yahoo, and so on, and expose them somewhere on internet so they get harvested by scammers. 2. write a dumb program that is able to do some primitive parsing of the emails from the scammers, and reply to them. For example, let's say the email fr…

I can't remember what the website is exactly and I am currently at work now so I won't be able to google it up but there was a person that use to do this except that he didn't use a bot but "bait" the scammers himself. It is utterly hilarious. What he does is he replies to a "scam email" and most of the scammers will do anything once they see an actual human being replying to their spam email. He obviously leads them…

I think you're taking about http://www.419eater.com Yeah, my idea would be to automate what they are doing. It won't be able to do the crazy stuff people came out with though, but it will be able to "reach" much more scammers.
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