A Cure For ‘Nigerian Internet Scams’. | Hacker News Reader

A Cure For ‘Nigerian Internet Scams’.

oonwoye.com

37 pointsOoTheNigerian32 comments

I don't think people are scammers because their career choices are limited. My evidence is mostly anecdotal, but these scammers (when they are successful) do not typically exhibit behavior consistent with people trying to build long term financial security. AFAIK , the proceeds from their scams would usually go towards buying 'bling' like cars , clothes and jewelry.

FWIW , I have met more than a few of these scammers in real life.

People who have no experience with long term financial security aren't likely to try to build it. I would venture to guess that most of the scammers you have met did not come from families or backgrounds that put a lot of emphasis on long term financial security.

As with many other crimes, it's done because it's easy, low-risk money, and a thrilling activity -- not as a part of any kind of bigger plan.

As with many other crimes, it's done by many entirely different people for many entirely different reasons.

>I don't think people are scammers because their career choices are limited. My evidence is mostly anecdotal, but these scammers (when they are successful) do not typically exhibit behavior consistent with people trying to build long term financial security.

The aim is not necessarily to convert everyone but to show the younger ones who have not started scamming that there is an alternative. As it is now, quite a number of people do not believe that young people can make quite a lot of sustainable income online going legit. It would be difficult to make those that do not live where there are role models to understand how it is when you do not have one. Just appreciate that you have the stories that come from the valley to motivate you. Nigerians are not inherently bad, most of them just want to make money and be successful. If they see alternatives, they will try them. I just hope I can show them that of they put half the effort they put in scamming (believe me it is quite a lot)into creating a startup, the outcome will be much better.

I am rooting for you to succeed. I know many people who are having a hard time monetizing their legit online ventures (in Nigeria). Maybe you can also go ahead and share your monetization 'secrets' with everyone

unfortunately, I have not made any money so I have no monetisation secrets to share .I believe if people are enlightened and exposed, they can make better choices. That is the main goal.

My experience in other developing-world places where nearly-free foreign money has allowed a few people to short-circuit the civilized-society-building process (e.g. tourist areas like Bali) is that, culturally, many people will begin to look at foreigners as nothing more than walking money machines. They then develop many of the same tendencies of the nouveau riche in developed countries, namely, having no clue how to wisely build wealth and instead buying things that they think give them status among their peers.

It's not a big jump from there to not feeling bad about just outright tricking foreigners out of their money. They've already been dehumanized, and are incomprehensibly rich anyway. When I was in Tunisia, there were several times when ordinary teenagers, not beggars or thieves, just outright shouted at me across the street, "Hey, American! Give me money! Just one dinar!" Some way to start a conversation.

Often, they simply don't know that there is an alternative -- their lives have never had the expectation that things can, should, and will get markedly better if certain rules and virtues are practiced, as is true for many of us on Hacker News. Anything like this project that can just make people aware of a better way to live is a good project.

I recently had a long conversation with a Nigerian who came to the US in high school and is now working in Europe after doing a law degree and an MBA. I was asking her about some of this stuff, including the question of whether the email scammers could be converted to productive entrepreneurs given the chance. Her response was very pessimistic. She said there are many that come to Europe, often legally, and simply continue the same scams there, rather than try to do anything legitimate.

These kinds of issues in Africa seem like a hard nuts to crack.

You know what? I was expecting, at the end of the article, that there would be a request for banking details to help this worthy venture get off the ground. Missed opportunity for comedy. Oh well.

I've got a different solution: a scam email auto-replier.

    Dear {name_match}, 

    Yes I am interested in receiving { money_quantity_match }. Very    
    interested.  I will happily { transfer_service_match } the money to you.
    But how do I know I can trust you?

I wrote up a toy one using an very early version of lamson, maybe it's a project worth revisiting.

What kind of replies do you get?

Assurances that they aren't crooks, scans of forged documents, religious claims ("I am a good CHRISTIAN brother"), that sort of thing.

It was my plan to build a markov process which oscillated between various sets of states (curious but untrusting, trusting, suspicious) as new emails are received. Now that I think about it, it is definitely a project worth revisiting.

How about a service that for a couple of $ a month ( or free ) people can forward their nigerian spam and your process 'has a conversation' with them wasting their time.

If you get enough people into this it will slow down their scamming a lot.

Not very many people would pay for it - scam email auto replying is a public good.

If I auto reply to your spam, it doesn't benefit you. At most, your domain would be placed on a "not a human" list at larger scam email shops. However, it might be useful if gmail/yahoo/hotmail ran such a service - that would make it very hard for scammers to separate real responses from phony from gmail users.

However, I've decided I will return to the project. I'll put it on bitbucket when it works with the latest version of lamson.

If you finish it let me know! I would definitely use it!

I had a similar thought. It would be interesting to create dozens of variations of this reply, then push out a constant stream of replies from different email addresses to the scammer. For bonus points, do the same in reply to the scammer's response.

It's not just because they lack healthy alternative career options; at this point, scamming Western white people out of money has become part of mass-cultural lore and is quite an important social differentiator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPQ2tB_Mcu4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ1YLL9mvBU

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to phish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day, set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

As long as there is a massive income differential between the average American/Canadian/European and the average Nigerian, skimming through the hundreds of millions of rich Westerners with Internet access in order to find a few (hundred? thousand?) dumb enough to send money to a scammer is going to be a profitable business strategy.

Someone trying to establish a legitimate business servicing a Western market is going to have a much harder time identifying profitable customers from 5,000 miles away, especially since the Indian outsourcing firms have been developing the infrastructure for this kind of thing in their own countries for decades.

Developing more entrepreneurs in Nigeria is a Good Thing, but I doubt it will have much of an impact on the scam business.

I agree these kids can be entrepreneurs. They are already entrepreneurial in their approach to scams. However I am afraid they will not get any VC funding for any of their gigs. But nevertheless a great initiative. The nigerian govt should take initiatives like what Israel did to promote entrepreneurship. Israel benefitted from the very talented diaspora it had, nigeria lacks this.

It's a difficult problem. Any thoughts?

In my opinion, and I think this concerns almost every African country, the problem is the infrastructures. If you want to take initiatives to promote entrepreneurship, you need to start by providing good services and prepare the environment:

  * Solid ISPs
  * Renew laws
  * Provide means to transfer money internationally 
  (Most money services are not really working here in Africa)

These points are probably not true for all African countries, but still, Most countries lack these elementary services.

what is really sad is that the whole reputation of a country is being dragged down the crapper just because of these emails. Which leaves me to ask, is the Nigerian government doing anything about this?

I am not an expert on the field but as far as I heared from my friends who do business down there the country has a huge problem with corruption. It goes through all levels of the entire system.

I heard anecdotally that a Nigerian guy was trying to raise money on Dragon's Den for a new venture in Nigeria (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/) and that he had like £5000 per month down for "Bribery Expenses". The dragons laughed but admired him for his straight up attitude (they didn't invest).

See the Excel sheet here:

http://www.doingbusiness.org/documents/Simulator_2010.xls

Nigeria is ranked 125th in the world for ease of doing business.

One of the requirements for a good business environment is stable, largely non-corrupt government, which is obviously lacking in Nigeria.

I can't find any of the these scams in my mail (and I'm not really sorry), but I seem to recall that they "come from" many other places than Nigeria. It's a shame, PR-wise, for Nigeria that they've come to be known as Nigerian scams, but even if the Government would, there isn't much they could do about it.

>Which leaves me to ask, is the Nigerian government doing anything about this [the 419 scammers]?

To be cynical for a while:

It's actually quite possible this is a net benefit to the country. The money coming in obviously "drips down". Officials maybe also take bribes, I don't know.

It may even raise the profile of Nigeria for aid - "look how desperate Nigerians are to stoop so low, if we address poverty there then it will also address this problem" (squeaky wheel gets the most oil, etc.).

Of course 419 refers to the article of Nigerian law that prohibits such actions.

I can't help posting this video... http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1710265

I had read "Inside the spam cartel" by spammer-X from Syngress press a few years back. I was really astonished as to how sophisticated the spam economy is. Previously I thought spamming was just someone opening a free account and sending dozens of hundreds of emails for a affiliate account of his/her.(Ah... the ignorant days!). But they use high tech solutions to get through spam filters and covert channels for payment. It requires skilful use of a lot of things just to send email. At first I was just curious of how these things work. But by the end of the book as was astonished by how creative these people can be in there use of tools.

The OP is right in presuming that this creative entrepreneurial energy can be channelled to make greater things in the favour of man kind. (That will also reduce the internet traffic and free the precious limited bandwidth).

What? So should this be applied the "enterprising" drug dealers and people who break into homes? Someone stole me laptop out of my bag in a restaurant, should he receive some sort of award? Maybe a medal?

But you're right, they probably don't have any other skills. The prison they're sent too should probably have some high school classes.

A supposedly responsible approach to crime is rehabilitation, isn't it? Or do you think the only proper way to treat criminals is to kill them all, or keep them in jail forever?

This approach may or may not work, however it's nice to see someone suggesting an "alternative treatment".

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