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1. I got told many years ago, that when you get that crazily bad emails, where it claims to be from some official source, but there are spelling mistakes, the r
by scraft 9y ago
1. I got told many years ago, that when you get that crazily bad emails, where it claims to be from some official source, but there are spelling mistakes, the return email address is obviously wrong, grammer is terrible, etc. the sort where it is so completely obviously it is a scam - often this is done on purpose, they aren't intereseting >99% of people who can spot a scam, they are interested in the <1% who can't spot it is obviously a problem. Basically they cast a wide net, but when the haul it in, only the whales are found within. At that point, they can use a large amount of resource, per victim, as they know they have a reasonable chance of success.
2. Separately to the above, a reasonable amount of men (perhaps women to? I don't know, I feel like it is more men) will happily look at girls, whether this in a Playboy Magazine in the 50's, looking at girls as the enter a bar in the 90's or whether it is flicking through images of a girl on Facebook/Instagram in the 21st century. Some of these men actually know it is a scam, but don't really care, at the end of the day it's a picture of an attractive girl/woman, they so they look through. Maybe they even add that profile as a friend, as they don't mind having the pictures appearing naturally in their news feed. I don't know whether many (any?) of this group of people end up getting scammed. Perhaps somehow overtime, they get convinced the account isn't fake, or perhaps they still think it is fake but agree to go onto a video chat and then are convinced on there, or perhaps they are trying to catch the scammer out, but end up being caught out themselves.
- astura 9y agoSee Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
- mosselman 9y agoInteresting link, thanks. It is a numbers game really and a logical one too; why spend time where you have to tread carefully when you can filter out the savvy targets.
- djsumdog 9y agoI remember that post. I also remember when I first learned that Nigerian scammers are actually for Nigeria. I thought for sure they'd pick a different country than their actual one.
- ilovefood 9y agoI seldomly read something more interesting. This is really well done, I had no idea Microsoft was looking into that field.
- manifestsilence 9y agoThe danger, or maybe just annoyance, with #2 (with only accepting friend requests without intent to do more) is that they then use the friend connection to further advertise to your friends. I accepted one once - wasn't paying attention to mutual friend count or something - and was immediately spammed on my wall with some site ad and then they deleted their account. So some, rather than the slow scam game, are just playing the spam game. Another danger is that with the extended access to your profile, they could get enough content to clone you convincingly, and then you get the scam where all your friends receive a duplicate friend request from "you", and the new profile tries to sell them on some scam.
- bootlooped 9y agoRegarding #1, I have heard this theory a couple times from different sources, but I have some skepticism about how true it is. It's entirely possible that bad grammar, poorly constructed stories and other tells that should be obvious just happened to work out in the scammers' favor, rather than them being intentionally designed that way.
- jpalomaki 9y agoThis is ”pre AI world”. Once scammers catch up with tech, things will change. When they learn to automate the scamming they can also afford to target people with low probability of falling into scam. This will lead to scam that is harder to detect and where the amounts are smaller (instead of going for the big fish, you can build on volume). The opportunities are endless. Just think for example the latest developments on speech synthesis (voice transfer). Improvements in CGI will allow creating believable fake videos. Mobile phones with fancy camera tech will allow 3d scans of people faces.
- dalore 9y agoThe second group, whilst they might not be getting scammed themselves, they help social proof that account to other people. Now someone else will be more likely to add the fake account if they see it is friends with other people, even someone you know in real life.