2 ms·

I think you may be referring to the following: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/ https:/

I think you may be referring to the following: 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-... https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/82814/secretly-smart-reason-scam-emails-are-poorly-written https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/82814/secretly-smart-rea... by immediately weeding out the skeptical, they can focus their direct person-hours of communication back and forth labor setting up the scam on the most vulnerable and guillible.

perihelions 5y ago
That's the one. The Cormac Herley / Microsoft article inspired lots of threads, https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20nigerian%20scammers&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20nigerian%20scammers&type...
mmahemoff 5y ago
Applies to genuine ads too. Where there's any cost involved, it's important for ROI to disqualify non-customers at any stage of the funnel (aka avoiding false positives). e.g. if you're paying $100 per click to attract a specific demographic, you don't want to run an ad that's so intriguing any random visitor will click on it. Not only will you be charged $100 for a dead lead, you'll also be making your ads less favourable to the algorithm, thus driving up future costs and/or making your ads less likely to appear in future.