7 ms·

Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

140 points by OoTheNigerian 16y ago

noverloop 16y ago
start a corporate shell in the UK? (or some other cheap place)
- mahmud 16y ago
  Why does he need to jump through hoops that others don't? Oh yes, because he is a 2nd-class netizen, the whole premise of his essay!
rsheridan6 16y ago
"I cannot ignore two very fair arguments. The amount of fraud from this end has necessitated these measures. Hey! That’s a gap in the market, why don’t you guys in Africa do something about it?0 Fuck off." That's really not a very convincing counterargument.
- markessien 16y ago
  Hmm, how many paypal killers have been created? Now you want to go create a paypal killer from an african country with a low internet population, and expect big sites to support this? I think "fuck off" is an appropriate answer to people suggesting this - it's just not going to happen! It's obvious that it won't happen, so anyone suggesting it...just doesn't get it, I guess.
  - jan_g 16y ago
    But there's a possibility, for example, to use credit cards and wire transfers. I use them all the time (especially wire transfer), while I never use paypal. There's lots of stuff I bought that way online and had it shipped to my country.
  - rmc 16y ago
    Small population? Nigeria has 180 million people. The rest of Africa has similar paypal issues, and a population of 600 million people
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    - kakaylor 16y ago
      I think the bigger issue is GDP and GDP per capita for both Nigeria and Africa as a whole: Nigeria GDP (PPP): $170bil Nigeria GDP per capita: $1754 I can understand why e-commerce companies might just choose to blacklist an entire country. There isn't much of a financial incentive to expend the resources for that small of a market. I am not trying to comment on whether this is justifiable or not, but that is the reality of the situation.
      - Duff 16y ago
        GDP isn't the issue with Africa and the number of Western companies that want nothing to do with the continent. The issue is the governments like Nigeria are completely incapable of regulating what goes on inside of its borders. In cases like Nigeria, where the "419" scam is actually an measurably significant industry within the country, the scammers are probably in cahoots with the authorities. Why does e-commerce work in the US? As a guy sitting in New York, how can I comfortably sell goods via the internet to someone in Hawaii or New Mexico? Fundamentally, it's because the US is a nation governed by law, and efforts to defraud are not acceptable.
        kakaylor 16y ago
        Very good point. I think the point on corruption and the rule of law is really significant. It goes beyond just e-commerce and into a whole economy. A government of men and not of law does not make for a thriving economy. If found these two maps on corruption and governance really interesting. They really speak to they trouble with doing e-commerce in Africa: Transparency International: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/... Governance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Governance_Indicators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Governance_Indicators I wonder how ratings for China / India / Brazil will change in the next few decades as their per-capita GDP increases.
  - gbengasesan 16y ago
    "small african country with a low population"? How does 144 million people sound to you? 85,208,008 mobile phone users and 44 million internet users low? Hmmm. For the rest, Bing/Google is your friend.
- mycroftiv 16y ago
  As I interpret the sentiment, the author is indicating that he is writing simply to express his frustration at being an innocent victim of collective punishment. He is stating that he is aware of the causes of the situation, and that there may be ways to engage in productive change, but neither of those things changes the basic personal injustice he is directly experiencing. In other words, he is not attempting to make a counterargument, he is disinterested in engaging in debate, he is simply very irritated by obstacles he encounters through no fault of his own.
  - araneae 16y ago
    But instead of saying that, he said "fuck you" which is more open to interpretation, I think.
    - Vivtek 16y ago
      Well. He said "fuck off," not "fuck you." To be fair, there's less interpretation. It's a rant, not an argument.
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  - dstein 16y ago
    he is not attempting to make a counterargument... he is simply very irritated Sounds like he'll fit right in with most of the Internet.
- tylerarnold 16y ago
  I'm having the exact same issue while traveling in Romania. Romania is a part of the European Union as well. It's incredibly frustrating just to sit there and get "unable to process." What a crappy error message too. How about "this is a suspicious transaction. Please call GoDaddy or join a LiveChat session to continue." It really feels second class. Fuck indeed!
  - iwwr 16y ago
    "Fuck indeed"? You mean fuck GoDaddy, it has competitors, use those instead.
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    Try joker.com. They're at least European and might have heard of Romania.
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markessien 16y ago
What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses towards Nigeria is the way they just dismiss the country with a wave of their hand. Sure, there is some scam coming out of the country, but some guy just looks at the numbers and then sends an email "Block Nigeria". And we're not talking of some small site, we're talking of one of the the biggest payment processors in the world. The country is the biggest market in Africa, people are quickly getting connected to the world, it's just not morally right to exclude an entire set of people in such a dismissive manner. Think of it this way: imagine that paypal suddenly decided to exclude Arizona from using Paypal because it has a higher statistical likelihood of fraud. A lot of people would protest at the unfairness of this action. But because it's Nigeria, there are very few people to protest. Paypal is a site that is only useful when everyone uses it. And everyone IS using it. Once they have entered that stage, it be becomes virtually impossible for other payment providers to compete effectively. In that situation, the market cannot solve this problem. There is no niche payment provider going to pop-up just for Nigeria. Paypal, once it so strongly dominates the market, has a moral obligation not to exclude anyone from using their services. It can't just stamp a country as not "allowed to use paypal"
- dangrossman 16y ago
  What is PayPal dominating? The number of sites that accept credit cards dwarfs the (overlapping) number of sites that accept PayPal for payment.
  - markessien 16y ago
    Nigerian issued credit/debit cards (mastercard/visa) don't work internationally, so can't be used to pay for online items.
    - adolph 16y ago
      Why is that?
      - krakensden 16y ago
pointillistic 16y ago
Are these famous "get money from your dead uncle in Nigeria", are the spamers really from Nigeria? Or is it operated from some basement in Brooklyn?
- dangrossman 16y ago
  At least some of them really were in Nigeria. You can find plenty of evidence from people reverse-scamming the senders of those letters for entertainment.
- gyardley 16y ago
  They're really from Nigeria (and other countries in Africa, but primarily Nigeria). They're known as '419 scams' there, after the section of the Nigerian criminal code that deals with advance-fee fraud. This sort of fraud isn't something everyone does, but everyone's aware of it - it's certainly a part of popular culture. For example, see the song 'I Go Chop Your Dollar', performed by a popular Nigerian actor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1nKR3gYRY8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1nKR3gYRY8
dangrossman 16y ago
This is a problem that will be fixed only when payment fraud in the country decreases. That'll happen in part simply by increasing the number of people online and making purchases. There are several countries my websites won't allow payments from, but Nigeria isn't currently on that list because it's not been a problem country for me in recent years. I'm sure other retailers are acting on real data too and would stop blocking Nigeria if they could.
- markessien 16y ago
  If paypal blocks Nigeria now...how will they ever know that payment fraud from Nigeria is decreasing?
  - varjag 16y ago
    PayPal isn't in this business to do justice. Nigeria's market size to risk factor is extremely bad, and perception of it generally is not improving. There is no point for them to absorbing the risk. Any given day I can dive into my spam folder and see at least a dozen of Nigerian scam offers, perhaps that explains the general perception. While on the dawn of the Web there was a number of places deemed to be sources of fraud (e.g. much of Eastern Europe), most of them got a grip on electronic crime, and their reputations improved. It's long overdue for Nigeria to get their act together.
    - microarchitect 16y ago
      > It's long overdue for Nigeria to get their act together. What do you mean by get their act together? In my experience living in a third world country, it's hard enough to get the establishment to prosecute violent crimes. So I'd say as an ordinary citizen it's pretty much impossible to get anyone who matters to take electronic crime seriously.
  - SaintSal 16y ago
    Great point, and a lesson that has already been learned (in a positive way) by the insurance business in England. Elephant & Castle was once an area in London where you couldn't get insurance easily, if at all. It took the founder of a business incubator there to call a few friends in the insurance business with the same argument: "how will you ever take advantage of this market if you don't start somewhere? I will do whatever it takes on my premises for you to be comfortable giving me insurance. After you're comfortable with doing business with me, you'll have first-mover advantage in the area." It worked. Of course, insurance is a slightly more competitive business than online payments. And I see Oo's point in the addendum too. Running a business is time-consuming. Saying you've identified a market gap so you should start ANOTHER business is patronising and ridiculous. And whether or not there is more fraud from any specific country doesn't excuse the laziness of a policy that unfairly prejudices and overburdens honest businesspeople from that country.
davelittle 16y ago
I understand why he is annoyed. I don't have things nearly so bad, but I do live overseas and use bank accounts in the United States (where I am from) on a regular basis. It leads to constant fraud flags - which I can, at least, normally clear up by talking to the companies involved and explaining myself. Paypal is disagreeable about it, so I've had to give up on using them for the most part. Anyway - I agree with him that it's a pain. My solution is to use a VPN, too. As long as that gets the problem solved I'm happy. Fraud IS a major concern in general. I don't have the data to even have an opinion on whether rejecting everything out of Nigeria so aggressively is justified, but if it was my business, would I flag it for manual inspection? Absolutely. I'd also be willing to listen to my customers and manually approve things when it's justified. I can't really ask for more than that. Now, as I said, I'm sure the situation if you are coming from Nigeria is even worse. But I think what he should be asking for is a little more openness in the "manual validation" area, rather than full up-front acceptance of his transactions. I don't think asking for that is realistic. His response to "the amount of fraud necessitates it" is "F you" ... well, what, is he saying there isn't a fraud problem, or if there is businesses should ignore it? Please. Give me a break. It's one thing to feel personally frustrated to that point, but to write it up like it's some kind of answer won't do anything. I don't know what answer is better than the status quo, and apparently he doesn't either. Anyone have a comment on what that might be?
piramida 16y ago
Not only Nigeria, may I point out that most countries of the world, besides the very few top ones (US, Canada, Japan, Australia and Eurozone countries) are in about the same position regarding e-commerce and web acceptance in general. You can't start a paypal account, you can't pay online with locally issued credit cards, and you generally are prejudiced as a criminal. Which must be contributing to the online crime coming from this countries, since if you are already treated as a thief, why not just be one? :)
- BoppreH 16y ago
  "Paypal won't let me register and account, so I'll start mass spamming scams online." I'm not sure I follow. Also, I'm Brazilian and Paypal accepted my locally issued credit card just fine.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    > "Paypal won't let me register and account, so I'll start mass spamming scams online." Something like: a bunch of reasonably well educated people with internet access, unable to participate in legitimate web commerce, are more likely to pursue illegitimate ways to make money online. Sort of the same problem you had in the 1990s with a bunch of viruses and scams coming out of Eastern Europe.
    - piramida 16y ago
      Exactly. You usually have no choice but to deal in electronic currencies which work in "3rd world" countries. And they most often serve scammers, porn sites, cialex pushers and so on. What are the chances of the legitimate online business which only can accept "dirty" payment methods? Well, lucky for you then that Brazil is included. I really wish for the situation to change for the better, eventually. But it seems rather stupid, from a programmer point of view, to ban hundred plus countries because you can not fix exploitation of your system by several criminals. Somewhat egocentric, "ah fuck those countries who cares about them anyway", the problem can only get worse. Internet does not know about borders, and you can't establish ghettos on Internet - it comes biting in the ass later.
MichaelGG 16y ago
Yes, browsing via a proxy or VPN while not in the US is just common practice for plenty of folks. Apart from fraud flagging, the sites that geo-IP for language settings is very annoying. (Seriously, the IETF actually gets Accept-Language right, it's actually implemented, and then ignored?? Sigh.) Google Chrome takes the cake here though. They use your IP to determine the install language. Even if you download the US binaries, they use your IP to determine your local search site and display non-English results. The real kicker? Chrome then prompts "This page is in <Spanish>. Would you like to translate it?"
- BoppreH 16y ago
  It works well for normal people. And these options can be configured from the "under the hood" preferences tab.
  - drdaeman 16y ago
    What's "normal"?
    - igravious 16y ago
      "normal" generally means "the way how I think the world should work". Haven't you realized that yet? ;)
  - MichaelGG 16y ago
    You're incorrect on both accounts. First, if my OS and browser preferences are stating English (or any language for that matter), why should the IP come into play? "Normal" people will already be using a localized OS and hence will send an Accept-Language with their preferred language (and perhaps country). Second, while you can go try to navigate the "Under the Hood" section in another language to switch languages, the default Google search uses "{google:baseURL}", which gets hard coded to the localized version someone though you should be forced to use. You actually have to delete the default search in the omnibar and create a new one, manually specifying the Google site you wish to use. There is no quick option to say "no, your silly auto-detection is broken, use the language I'm specifying for UI and search".
wybo 16y ago
Maybe this is not a very popular response, but am I alone in thinking that the collective responsibility for this rests, to some extent at least, indeed with all Nigerians? In that as citizens they should support politicians that take 419/spam/fraud issues seriously? Were there no collective responsibility, then all arguments of the kind that the West owes/owed something to Africa for its colonial misdeeds, would even be less valid (as hardly anyone involved with that is around any more...). (and just to clarify, I do think the West owes something to Africa, but collective responsibility can't go one way only. Being responsible, and building a reputation for it, is as important for nations as it is for businesses, teams and individual employees)
- markessien 16y ago
  Just like collective responsibility for the Iraq and Afganistan wars rests with all Americans?
  - wybo 16y ago
    Indeed, orthogonal to the extent to which those wars are bad on overall (and the collective responsibility of the Dutch and Brits for slave trade in the past, which we can all agree on, was a shame... (am Dutch, to take it home...))
si2 16y ago
Where do I send my bank account information?
daleharvey 16y ago
While on holiday in Morocco one of my domains got very close to expiring, after trying for an hour or so to renew it I have a friend my details and they logged in and done it immediately. for some reason didnt think of using a proxy I couldnt imagine how frustrating it would be for that to happen regularly
- simonw 16y ago
  123reg.co.uk was inaccessible from both Morocco and Egypt when I travelled there last year. I had to use a UK-based VPN to modify DNS records.
damoncali 16y ago
This will all go away when Nigerians stop the fraud. It's really that simple (or that complex, depending on your point of view). Like many of Africa's problems, this one is systemic.
- markessien 16y ago
  How many percentage of internet users from Nigeria are scamming? It's a small minority, probably similar to the number of Americans sending spam emails. But Nigeria can be simply cancelled from the system, because it's a low income country. It's not a systemic problem, and it's not an 'Africa problem'. It's a choice by paypal.
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    > It's a small minority, probably similar to the number of Americans sending spam emails. Do you have any data to verify your claims?
- microarchitect 16y ago
  So what do you suggest an ordinary citizen should do? Don a cape and black mask and hunt the scammers down?!
  - damoncali 16y ago
    I have no idea. But if I'm Paypal, I do what's in my best interest, and that doesn't include helping out the people of Nigeria. That's up to the Nigerians.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Thats not a bad idea - it will cut down on fraud at least.
markessien 16y ago
Actually, there is a lot of talk of the problems, and little talk about solutions. I have a potential solution: Local whitelisting companies. Paypal and all other payment providers partner with local companies who claim that will pre-screen people who want to use paypal. These companies then use whatever methods they want (visiting the homes, checking bank accounts, escrow) to verify that the people will be valid paypal customers. Paypal then does not need to verify thousands of people, it just needs to trust this company, and if the company fails a few times, it's replaced and pays some kind of penalty. Also, amounts can be limited to some value that the verification company holds in escrow for paypal. Something that moves the burden of verification to people who are aware of how things work locally.
dogcoffee 16y ago
It's not limited to Nigeria, either. I experienced the same frustrating roadblocks while trying to develop websites on an East African island. (A Small Orange treated me with particular injustice based on my location and I will never get the bad taste out of my mouth when I see their name.) However, I can't offer a better solution than taking a civil approach to vetting/rejection in case the customer is a real, innocent human being. And that doesn't seem like much of a solution.
kazey 16y ago
I believe if anybody feels Nigerians deserve a chance, they should start an online payment insurance company, to cover for the risk exposure :), so the likes of paypal etc can buy the insurance and everybody is happy. You can then develop an API (that does the verifications and flags orders)etc for merchants to use together with the payment gateways to be covered by the policy.
imprintcool 16y ago
Does anything on this page look remotely Nigerian to you. #racistfaces http://www.perimetec.com/7-Things-You-Didnt-Know-About-Email-Spam-Worldwide.php http://www.perimetec.com/7-Things-You-Didnt-Know-About-Email...
imprintcool 16y ago
http://bit.ly/11dVsF http://bit.ly/11dVsF

140 points by OoTheNigerian 16y ago

noverloop 16y ago

start a corporate shell in the UK? (or some other cheap place)

mahmud 16y ago
Why does he need to jump through hoops that others don't? Oh yes, because he is a 2nd-class netizen, the whole premise of his essay!

rsheridan6 16y ago

"I cannot ignore two very fair arguments. The amount of fraud from this end has necessitated these measures. Hey! That’s a gap in the market, why don’t you guys in Africa do something about it?0 Fuck off." That's really not a very convincing counterargument.

markessien 16y ago
Hmm, how many paypal killers have been created? Now you want to go create a paypal killer from an african country with a low internet population, and expect big sites to support this? I think "fuck off" is an appropriate answer to people suggesting this - it's just not going to happen! It's obvious that it won't happen, so anyone suggesting it...just doesn't get it, I guess.
- jan_g 16y ago
  But there's a possibility, for example, to use credit cards and wire transfers. I use them all the time (especially wire transfer), while I never use paypal. There's lots of stuff I bought that way online and had it shipped to my country.
- rmc 16y ago
  Small population? Nigeria has 180 million people. The rest of Africa has similar paypal issues, and a population of 600 million people
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  - kakaylor 16y ago
    I think the bigger issue is GDP and GDP per capita for both Nigeria and Africa as a whole: Nigeria GDP (PPP): $170bil Nigeria GDP per capita: $1754 I can understand why e-commerce companies might just choose to blacklist an entire country. There isn't much of a financial incentive to expend the resources for that small of a market. I am not trying to comment on whether this is justifiable or not, but that is the reality of the situation.
    - Duff 16y ago
      GDP isn't the issue with Africa and the number of Western companies that want nothing to do with the continent. The issue is the governments like Nigeria are completely incapable of regulating what goes on inside of its borders. In cases like Nigeria, where the "419" scam is actually an measurably significant industry within the country, the scammers are probably in cahoots with the authorities. Why does e-commerce work in the US? As a guy sitting in New York, how can I comfortably sell goods via the internet to someone in Hawaii or New Mexico? Fundamentally, it's because the US is a nation governed by law, and efforts to defraud are not acceptable.
      - kakaylor 16y ago
        Very good point. I think the point on corruption and the rule of law is really significant. It goes beyond just e-commerce and into a whole economy. A government of men and not of law does not make for a thriving economy. If found these two maps on corruption and governance really interesting. They really speak to they trouble with doing e-commerce in Africa: Transparency International: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/... Governance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Governance_Indicators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Governance_Indicators I wonder how ratings for China / India / Brazil will change in the next few decades as their per-capita GDP increases.
- gbengasesan 16y ago
  "small african country with a low population"? How does 144 million people sound to you? 85,208,008 mobile phone users and 44 million internet users low? Hmmm. For the rest, Bing/Google is your friend.
mycroftiv 16y ago
As I interpret the sentiment, the author is indicating that he is writing simply to express his frustration at being an innocent victim of collective punishment. He is stating that he is aware of the causes of the situation, and that there may be ways to engage in productive change, but neither of those things changes the basic personal injustice he is directly experiencing. In other words, he is not attempting to make a counterargument, he is disinterested in engaging in debate, he is simply very irritated by obstacles he encounters through no fault of his own.
- araneae 16y ago
  But instead of saying that, he said "fuck you" which is more open to interpretation, I think.
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    Well. He said "fuck off," not "fuck you." To be fair, there's less interpretation. It's a rant, not an argument.
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- dstein 16y ago
  he is not attempting to make a counterargument... he is simply very irritated Sounds like he'll fit right in with most of the Internet.
tylerarnold 16y ago
I'm having the exact same issue while traveling in Romania. Romania is a part of the European Union as well. It's incredibly frustrating just to sit there and get "unable to process." What a crappy error message too. How about "this is a suspicious transaction. Please call GoDaddy or join a LiveChat session to continue." It really feels second class. Fuck indeed!
- iwwr 16y ago
  "Fuck indeed"? You mean fuck GoDaddy, it has competitors, use those instead.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Try joker.com. They're at least European and might have heard of Romania.
- deleted 16y ago
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markessien 16y ago

What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses towards Nigeria is the way they just dismiss the country with a wave of their hand. Sure, there is some scam coming out of the country, but some guy just looks at the numbers and then sends an email "Block Nigeria". And we're not talking of some small site, we're talking of one of the the biggest payment processors in the world. The country is the biggest market in Africa, people are quickly getting connected to the world, it's just not morally right to exclude an entire set of people in such a dismissive manner. Think of it this way: imagine that paypal suddenly decided to exclude Arizona from using Paypal because it has a higher statistical likelihood of fraud. A lot of people would protest at the unfairness of this action. But because it's Nigeria, there are very few people to protest. Paypal is a site that is only useful when everyone uses it. And everyone IS using it. Once they have entered that stage, it be becomes virtually impossible for other payment providers to compete effectively. In that situation, the market cannot solve this problem. There is no niche payment provider going to pop-up just for Nigeria. Paypal, once it so strongly dominates the market, has a moral obligation not to exclude anyone from using their services. It can't just stamp a country as not "allowed to use paypal"

dangrossman 16y ago
What is PayPal dominating? The number of sites that accept credit cards dwarfs the (overlapping) number of sites that accept PayPal for payment.
- markessien 16y ago
  Nigerian issued credit/debit cards (mastercard/visa) don't work internationally, so can't be used to pay for online items.
  - adolph 16y ago
    Why is that?
    - krakensden 16y ago

pointillistic 16y ago

Are these famous "get money from your dead uncle in Nigeria", are the spamers really from Nigeria? Or is it operated from some basement in Brooklyn?

dangrossman 16y ago
At least some of them really were in Nigeria. You can find plenty of evidence from people reverse-scamming the senders of those letters for entertainment.
gyardley 16y ago
They're really from Nigeria (and other countries in Africa, but primarily Nigeria). They're known as '419 scams' there, after the section of the Nigerian criminal code that deals with advance-fee fraud. This sort of fraud isn't something everyone does, but everyone's aware of it - it's certainly a part of popular culture. For example, see the song 'I Go Chop Your Dollar', performed by a popular Nigerian actor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1nKR3gYRY8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1nKR3gYRY8

dangrossman 16y ago

This is a problem that will be fixed only when payment fraud in the country decreases. That'll happen in part simply by increasing the number of people online and making purchases. There are several countries my websites won't allow payments from, but Nigeria isn't currently on that list because it's not been a problem country for me in recent years. I'm sure other retailers are acting on real data too and would stop blocking Nigeria if they could.

markessien 16y ago
If paypal blocks Nigeria now...how will they ever know that payment fraud from Nigeria is decreasing?
- varjag 16y ago
  PayPal isn't in this business to do justice. Nigeria's market size to risk factor is extremely bad, and perception of it generally is not improving. There is no point for them to absorbing the risk. Any given day I can dive into my spam folder and see at least a dozen of Nigerian scam offers, perhaps that explains the general perception. While on the dawn of the Web there was a number of places deemed to be sources of fraud (e.g. much of Eastern Europe), most of them got a grip on electronic crime, and their reputations improved. It's long overdue for Nigeria to get their act together.
  - microarchitect 16y ago
    > It's long overdue for Nigeria to get their act together. What do you mean by get their act together? In my experience living in a third world country, it's hard enough to get the establishment to prosecute violent crimes. So I'd say as an ordinary citizen it's pretty much impossible to get anyone who matters to take electronic crime seriously.
- SaintSal 16y ago
  Great point, and a lesson that has already been learned (in a positive way) by the insurance business in England. Elephant & Castle was once an area in London where you couldn't get insurance easily, if at all. It took the founder of a business incubator there to call a few friends in the insurance business with the same argument: "how will you ever take advantage of this market if you don't start somewhere? I will do whatever it takes on my premises for you to be comfortable giving me insurance. After you're comfortable with doing business with me, you'll have first-mover advantage in the area." It worked. Of course, insurance is a slightly more competitive business than online payments. And I see Oo's point in the addendum too. Running a business is time-consuming. Saying you've identified a market gap so you should start ANOTHER business is patronising and ridiculous. And whether or not there is more fraud from any specific country doesn't excuse the laziness of a policy that unfairly prejudices and overburdens honest businesspeople from that country.

davelittle 16y ago

I understand why he is annoyed. I don't have things nearly so bad, but I do live overseas and use bank accounts in the United States (where I am from) on a regular basis. It leads to constant fraud flags - which I can, at least, normally clear up by talking to the companies involved and explaining myself. Paypal is disagreeable about it, so I've had to give up on using them for the most part. Anyway - I agree with him that it's a pain. My solution is to use a VPN, too. As long as that gets the problem solved I'm happy. Fraud IS a major concern in general. I don't have the data to even have an opinion on whether rejecting everything out of Nigeria so aggressively is justified, but if it was my business, would I flag it for manual inspection? Absolutely. I'd also be willing to listen to my customers and manually approve things when it's justified. I can't really ask for more than that. Now, as I said, I'm sure the situation if you are coming from Nigeria is even worse. But I think what he should be asking for is a little more openness in the "manual validation" area, rather than full up-front acceptance of his transactions. I don't think asking for that is realistic. His response to "the amount of fraud necessitates it" is "F you" ... well, what, is he saying there isn't a fraud problem, or if there is businesses should ignore it? Please. Give me a break. It's one thing to feel personally frustrated to that point, but to write it up like it's some kind of answer won't do anything. I don't know what answer is better than the status quo, and apparently he doesn't either. Anyone have a comment on what that might be?

piramida 16y ago

Not only Nigeria, may I point out that most countries of the world, besides the very few top ones (US, Canada, Japan, Australia and Eurozone countries) are in about the same position regarding e-commerce and web acceptance in general. You can't start a paypal account, you can't pay online with locally issued credit cards, and you generally are prejudiced as a criminal. Which must be contributing to the online crime coming from this countries, since if you are already treated as a thief, why not just be one? :)

BoppreH 16y ago
"Paypal won't let me register and account, so I'll start mass spamming scams online." I'm not sure I follow. Also, I'm Brazilian and Paypal accepted my locally issued credit card just fine.
- _delirium 16y ago
  > "Paypal won't let me register and account, so I'll start mass spamming scams online." Something like: a bunch of reasonably well educated people with internet access, unable to participate in legitimate web commerce, are more likely to pursue illegitimate ways to make money online. Sort of the same problem you had in the 1990s with a bunch of viruses and scams coming out of Eastern Europe.
  - piramida 16y ago
    Exactly. You usually have no choice but to deal in electronic currencies which work in "3rd world" countries. And they most often serve scammers, porn sites, cialex pushers and so on. What are the chances of the legitimate online business which only can accept "dirty" payment methods? Well, lucky for you then that Brazil is included. I really wish for the situation to change for the better, eventually. But it seems rather stupid, from a programmer point of view, to ban hundred plus countries because you can not fix exploitation of your system by several criminals. Somewhat egocentric, "ah fuck those countries who cares about them anyway", the problem can only get worse. Internet does not know about borders, and you can't establish ghettos on Internet - it comes biting in the ass later.

MichaelGG 16y ago

Yes, browsing via a proxy or VPN while not in the US is just common practice for plenty of folks. Apart from fraud flagging, the sites that geo-IP for language settings is very annoying. (Seriously, the IETF actually gets Accept-Language right, it's actually implemented, and then ignored?? Sigh.) Google Chrome takes the cake here though. They use your IP to determine the install language. Even if you download the US binaries, they use your IP to determine your local search site and display non-English results. The real kicker? Chrome then prompts "This page is in <Spanish>. Would you like to translate it?"

BoppreH 16y ago
It works well for normal people. And these options can be configured from the "under the hood" preferences tab.
- drdaeman 16y ago
  What's "normal"?
  - igravious 16y ago
    "normal" generally means "the way how I think the world should work". Haven't you realized that yet? ;)
- MichaelGG 16y ago
  You're incorrect on both accounts. First, if my OS and browser preferences are stating English (or any language for that matter), why should the IP come into play? "Normal" people will already be using a localized OS and hence will send an Accept-Language with their preferred language (and perhaps country). Second, while you can go try to navigate the "Under the Hood" section in another language to switch languages, the default Google search uses "{google:baseURL}", which gets hard coded to the localized version someone though you should be forced to use. You actually have to delete the default search in the omnibar and create a new one, manually specifying the Google site you wish to use. There is no quick option to say "no, your silly auto-detection is broken, use the language I'm specifying for UI and search".

wybo 16y ago

Maybe this is not a very popular response, but am I alone in thinking that the collective responsibility for this rests, to some extent at least, indeed with all Nigerians? In that as citizens they should support politicians that take 419/spam/fraud issues seriously? Were there no collective responsibility, then all arguments of the kind that the West owes/owed something to Africa for its colonial misdeeds, would even be less valid (as hardly anyone involved with that is around any more...). (and just to clarify, I do think the West owes something to Africa, but collective responsibility can't go one way only. Being responsible, and building a reputation for it, is as important for nations as it is for businesses, teams and individual employees)

markessien 16y ago
Just like collective responsibility for the Iraq and Afganistan wars rests with all Americans?
- wybo 16y ago
  Indeed, orthogonal to the extent to which those wars are bad on overall (and the collective responsibility of the Dutch and Brits for slave trade in the past, which we can all agree on, was a shame... (am Dutch, to take it home...))

si2 16y ago

Where do I send my bank account information?

daleharvey 16y ago

While on holiday in Morocco one of my domains got very close to expiring, after trying for an hour or so to renew it I have a friend my details and they logged in and done it immediately. for some reason didnt think of using a proxy I couldnt imagine how frustrating it would be for that to happen regularly

simonw 16y ago
123reg.co.uk was inaccessible from both Morocco and Egypt when I travelled there last year. I had to use a UK-based VPN to modify DNS records.

damoncali 16y ago

This will all go away when Nigerians stop the fraud. It's really that simple (or that complex, depending on your point of view). Like many of Africa's problems, this one is systemic.

markessien 16y ago
How many percentage of internet users from Nigeria are scamming? It's a small minority, probably similar to the number of Americans sending spam emails. But Nigeria can be simply cancelled from the system, because it's a low income country. It's not a systemic problem, and it's not an 'Africa problem'. It's a choice by paypal.
- epochwolf 16y ago
  > It's a small minority, probably similar to the number of Americans sending spam emails. Do you have any data to verify your claims?
microarchitect 16y ago
So what do you suggest an ordinary citizen should do? Don a cape and black mask and hunt the scammers down?!
- damoncali 16y ago
  I have no idea. But if I'm Paypal, I do what's in my best interest, and that doesn't include helping out the people of Nigeria. That's up to the Nigerians.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Thats not a bad idea - it will cut down on fraud at least.

markessien 16y ago

Actually, there is a lot of talk of the problems, and little talk about solutions. I have a potential solution: Local whitelisting companies. Paypal and all other payment providers partner with local companies who claim that will pre-screen people who want to use paypal. These companies then use whatever methods they want (visiting the homes, checking bank accounts, escrow) to verify that the people will be valid paypal customers. Paypal then does not need to verify thousands of people, it just needs to trust this company, and if the company fails a few times, it's replaced and pays some kind of penalty. Also, amounts can be limited to some value that the verification company holds in escrow for paypal. Something that moves the burden of verification to people who are aware of how things work locally.

dogcoffee 16y ago

It's not limited to Nigeria, either. I experienced the same frustrating roadblocks while trying to develop websites on an East African island. (A Small Orange treated me with particular injustice based on my location and I will never get the bad taste out of my mouth when I see their name.) However, I can't offer a better solution than taking a civil approach to vetting/rejection in case the customer is a real, innocent human being. And that doesn't seem like much of a solution.

kazey 16y ago

I believe if anybody feels Nigerians deserve a chance, they should start an online payment insurance company, to cover for the risk exposure :), so the likes of paypal etc can buy the insurance and everybody is happy. You can then develop an API (that does the verifications and flags orders)etc for merchants to use together with the payment gateways to be covered by the policy.

imprintcool 16y ago

Does anything on this page look remotely Nigerian to you. #racistfaces http://www.perimetec.com/7-Things-You-Didnt-Know-About-Email-Spam-Worldwide.php http://www.perimetec.com/7-Things-You-Didnt-Know-About-Email...

imprintcool 16y ago

http://bit.ly/11dVsF http://bit.ly/11dVsF