This is also mentioned in the book "Think like a Freak" by by Steven D. Evitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
71–79 of 79 posts
Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you automated it though, and scaled it enough, you could effectively spam the scammers, reducing their profitability.
Yes it could be a feature of the spam detector. However it could lead to an arms race. What if the scammers start to write bots that parse the answers until there is a substantial progress in the scam? We would end up with machine small talk and the overall level of spam traffic would skyrocket…
If the scammers learn to write parsers, then job well done. They'll have a skill they can use to get a real job.
Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
#73Earlier 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.
The initial contact is 'en masse', but the followups are all by hand. Time spent by the scammer to respond to potential marks is, in fact, a scarce resource.
Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes it could be a feature of the spam detector. However it could lead to an arms race. What if the scammers start to write bots that parse the answers until there is a substantial progress in the scam? We would end up with machine small talk and the overall level of spam traffic would skyrocket…
If the scammers learn to write parsers, then job well done. They'll have a skill they can use to get a real job.
That won't happen. Some evil geek would write the parser and sell it to all of them.
Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm sure there are some real a@#holes participating and running these scams but often the people on the ground are just human beings who have no other way to earn money. So the bot is probably a better idea than targeted humiliation. Making crime quietly unprofitable is a good thing. (You can help with Nigerian development, eg by giving to Doctors without Borders or other approaches.)
Wait, what? No thoer way to earn money? These are common thieves looking for victims to rob them out of as much money as they can. People with skill, a PC, access to the internet and good social skills.
That sounds like most telemarketeers to me.
Outbound call centers employ these people by the legions.
And selling crap stock to retirees is no better than pretending you're a Nigerian prince.
Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
#76One 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…
My favorite of course is when the "victim" scammed the scammer of 60 bucks :D
Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, the goal is to have lots of emails responding to the scammers, so they don't know who to pay attention to, so that's hard to have a manual process for that (and there's already 419eaters).
As I commented elsewhere in the topic, this runs the risk that the scammers themselves start to use bots to parse and analyze the responses, yielding to a net increase in spam traffic, although no human would read the messages.
Yes, but then the scam business would be less profitable for them since they would have to buy or build those bots to analyze answer. Plus it could create some kind of war on automated conversation bot which would be a net win for the AI in general.
Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
419 Eaters, possibly? There are quite a few people who contribute their stories there: http://www.419eater.com/html/letters.htm
http://www.419eater.com/html/user_subs/godfather/plonker1.jp...
A great read indeed.
Re: Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
#79This is also mentioned in the book "Think like a Freak" by by Steven D. Evitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Here's the link: http://freakonomics.com/2014/04/04/bring-your-think-like-a-f.... They also mentioned it recently in their podcast.