I always thought they're just doing that to circumvent spam filters. Seems more plausible to me.
The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
81–90 of 117 posts
Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#82This is bollocks. Speaking for Britain, and I think I can, there are hoards of would be victims to this kind of scam, particular of the current retirees generation, who are extremely vulnerable to having the wool pulled over their eyes about technical and internet security best practice matters, but for whom just so much as a poor turn of phrase or some unusually laid out punctuation is an absolute dead giveaway. If…
>because at the end of the day they don't speak English very well and don't have access to anyone who can. They have access to spell checkers. I somewhat agree that current retirees may be very sensitive to spelling mistakes, but spammers often aren't even putting in the minimum amount of effort to produce an error free E-Mail. I think that both theories aren't satisfying.
Everyone has access to spell checkers. Does that mean spelling mistakes don't exist nymore?
Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#83This is bollocks. Speaking for Britain, and I think I can, there are hoards of would be victims to this kind of scam, particular of the current retirees generation, who are extremely vulnerable to having the wool pulled over their eyes about technical and internet security best practice matters, but for whom just so much as a poor turn of phrase or some unusually laid out punctuation is an absolute dead giveaway. If…
100%. This article is a popular “Reddit” theory I’ve seen float around for a while now and it’s just not true! I’ve worked IT help desk before and have seen lots of phishing emails. If scammers tightened up their spelling and grammar skills a tiny bit they would catch many more victims effortlessly. The bar is insanely low. Most users could spot obvious phishing emails. But emails with even just a little more effort…
The theory I heard worked in the other direction: if we assume scammers have a finite amount of time, it could be in their interest to minimize the amount of "likely good targets" in order to increase the amount of "very likely good targets". So all those untapped potential targets are just too similar to non-good targets for them to discriminate effectively, leaving them so far focused on the lower-hanging fruit.
I mean, with Google Translate, spellcheckers, etc, improving all the time, at least some of those messages should have been improving as well, no? If their grammar has not improved at all during the last decade, then there might be a hinge of truth to the theory.
Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#84The article misses one of the most common misspelling reason: getting thru Bayesian filters. It has more to do with tech and less with psychology.
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Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#85This is bollocks. Speaking for Britain, and I think I can, there are hoards of would be victims to this kind of scam, particular of the current retirees generation, who are extremely vulnerable to having the wool pulled over their eyes about technical and internet security best practice matters, but for whom just so much as a poor turn of phrase or some unusually laid out punctuation is an absolute dead giveaway. If…
Why would you say that here, there are so many indians browsing hackernews. Don't help them get better at scamming.
> Why would you say that here, there are so many indians browsing hackernews.
> Don't help them get better at scamming.
Yeah. The last thing you want is someone like me getting into scamming, right? /s
Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#86This is bollocks. Speaking for Britain, and I think I can, there are hoards of would be victims to this kind of scam, particular of the current retirees generation, who are extremely vulnerable to having the wool pulled over their eyes about technical and internet security best practice matters, but for whom just so much as a poor turn of phrase or some unusually laid out punctuation is an absolute dead giveaway. If…
>because at the end of the day they don't speak English very well and don't have access to anyone who can. They have access to spell checkers. I somewhat agree that current retirees may be very sensitive to spelling mistakes, but spammers often aren't even putting in the minimum amount of effort to produce an error free E-Mail. I think that both theories aren't satisfying.
Spell chequers are off ten knot enough two insure correct righting off a massage.
Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
>because at the end of the day they don't speak English very well and don't have access to anyone who can. You believe they don't have access to fiverr or any of the numerous sites that will copy edit for a couple dollars of the thousands bucks they are scamming?
They probably don't realise their English is bad. Are you going to pay for a copyeditor if you don't realise you need one?
Not to mention that if you're looking for copyeditors on freelancer websites, you've got to provide them with some credit card details and evidence you are running something most freelancers are going to identify and report as criminal activity. There's a reason the majority of these scams want cash payment in Western Union or Bitcoin...
Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this why when I'm on Etsy, some obscure, niche item that I'm looking at will always say "13 people have this in their carts right now"? Etsy doesn't seem like the type to me, or maybe that code is just flawed
I think they just include abandoned shopping carts in this number
...and those abandoned shopping carts are from Google Search Bot which checked the product prices...
Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#89Same reason Nigerian 419 scammers continue to make it clear they're from Nigeria: If you're unaware enough not to know that "Nigeria" is a red flag for "scam," you're exactly the mark they want.
There's a much, much simpler reason. The object of the scam is to persuade you to send money to the only country they can collect it, which is Nigeria.
Most of the people who haven't heard of Nigerian prince scams have spam filters which have. I suspect their spam-filter evasion rates are so low they really, really wouldn't want to filter those people out if they knew what they were doing
(I suspect the reverse is actually true: a lot of the people running the scams have heard legends about how much their fellow countrymen made from using certain email templates, but have no idea how much of a running joke they are in Western discourse and how consistently they're filtered out)
Re: The clever reason scammers can’t spell (2019)
#90This is bollocks. Speaking for Britain, and I think I can, there are hoards of would be victims to this kind of scam, particular of the current retirees generation, who are extremely vulnerable to having the wool pulled over their eyes about technical and internet security best practice matters, but for whom just so much as a poor turn of phrase or some unusually laid out punctuation is an absolute dead giveaway. If…
100%. This article is a popular “Reddit” theory I’ve seen float around for a while now and it’s just not true! I’ve worked IT help desk before and have seen lots of phishing emails. If scammers tightened up their spelling and grammar skills a tiny bit they would catch many more victims effortlessly. The bar is insanely low. Most users could spot obvious phishing emails. But emails with even just a little more effort…
I'm not sure it's the case with the type of scam that the article is talking about. Phishing credentials and getting people on the phone to buy gift cards and transfer money require a vastly different approach I suppose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18bovtIlrpI
Skip through the hot parts of the video per the graph and just see how the scam actually works, and I think that for all the social engineering steps required and the sheer amount of time spent on the phone, most people would just give up even if they maybe fell for the initial well designed email.
I don't really want to speculate on the spelling/email of scam emails as I think short of some reporter just finding a spam-house and asking, it will all be senseless speculation. The article theory has plausible theories, but might very well be specious. I don't buy that it's due to poor English skills, as spellchecks are plentiful and I have no doubt that the spam-houses could easily pirate older copies of Word and get a decent looking email.
Similarly, if it was effective, I have to imagine that this is the format they'd pick.
The simplest explanations of the poorly formatted/written emails and chats for me are:
1. The targets that have the highest chance of success don't care about the emails
2. The formatting of the initial emails doesn't impact the scam in a significant way
From a more personal perspective and the people I know who continued with the scam past its initial stages, they didn't pay attention to the formatting, just the general idea behind the message was more their concern. The IRS scams, giftcard scams, etc, put some sort of pressure on the people in a way that they truly stopped thinking about the content and were more worried about the idea behind the message: they would get in trouble if they didn't comply, and the financial concerns were the driving force.