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Because it works. Still relevant, from Microsoft Research: "Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?" This approach suggests an answer to the quest
by jlengrand 5y ago
Because it works. Still relevant, from Microsoft Research:
"Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?"
This approach suggests an answer to the question in the title. Far-fetched tales of West African riches
strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an
advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since
his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian
scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most
gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to
self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his
favor.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/WhyFromNigeria.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
- skilled 5y agoI have to admit, I never paid this much thought, but your comment made me laugh out loud. Hahaha! Thank you!
- jlengrand 5y agoI’ve discovered that paper a couple years back and indeed, once you hear it it just makes total sense, in a funny way
- jacquesm 5y agoNot so funny for some. One person I know, (80+) got scammed out of a reasonably large sum of money (very large for them, probably pocket change for HN). They could not imagine that people would be so mean as to feign an emergency to scam others. These assholes really hurt people.
- Clubber 5y agoYup, they're robbing old people of their life savings. It seems nobody seems to be doing anything to prosecute or even track these people down.
- cosmodisk 5y agoIt's an international crime most of the time, with operations that can be opened in a day. It doesn't help that local law enforcement in some countries actively covering these types of crimes.
- notum 5y agoThankfully, there's people who fight back: https://www.419eater.com/ https://www.419eater.com/
- jacquesm 5y agoIt looks as though the old forum is dead and the new one is here: https://aff.419eater.com/ https://aff.419eater.com/
- iotku 5y agoYep, often praying on good will or desperation of older generations. A lot of people think it's laughable that anyone would fall for "simple obvious scams" but I've met a good handful of older family and their more elderly friends who either fell to a scam or were only stopped once someone at a store questioned them as to why they were buying lots of gift cards all at once. In some cases scammers will work on people over a long period of time to gain their trust.
- teddyh 5y agoNB: “Preying”, not “praying”.
- jlengrand 5y agoYou may have misunderstood my comment. The way the introduction of the article is phrased is funny, what scammers do is horrifying. I've had people in my close family fall into debts to those folks, they target the weakest and literally go heaps and bounds to extract as much as they can from their 'mugus'. Not fun at all :S
- lbriner 5y agoAlso, a lot of people I suspect still have old email software (Outlook Express anyone?) which might not even have spam filters set up. It is sad because I think it isn't just gullible people generally, but those who did not grow up with computers and won't understand that "This is your bank informing you of a security breach" is bogus are unfairly hit. Other thing is that the cost of sending massive numbers of emails is basically nothing so why not? If only 100 people out of an email list of 100M click through, that might pay you for this month.
- jaywalk 5y agoWho uses spam filtering in their email client anymore? That's done at the server level.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoI do, on my own domain, because it's easier to train the filter within the client, but mainly because that client is the only place I access that email account.
- ColinWright 5y agoFWIW, every server-level spam filter I'm used has had so many false positives it's caused me significant problems. Also FWIW, people to whom I send email regularly tell me that their email systems mis-classify my emails as spam. I've spoken with several networking specialists, and they all shrug their shoulders and say: "It's the server level spam filtering ... it's not very good." GMail in particular is known to be aggressively negative towards email originating from anywhere other than another GMail account. So in answer to your no doubt intended to be rhetorical question, I use spam filtering in my email system, not on the server.
- mitchdoogle 5y agoJust as a counterpoint, my company uses Google Workspace for email and we receive a good deal of spam. Been using it a couple years now and it's been very good at identifying spam, with very few false positives.
- missedthecue 5y agoIsn't the gullibility scale a spectrum though? Perhaps if the emails sent purportedly originated in nations of higher repute, he would scam all of the most gullible people and in addition, some less gullible people, resulting in a greater profit. After all the marginal cost of sending out extra emails is basically free. It's not as if he needs to only select the most gullible people to save on costs.
- pasabagi 5y agoI think it's not just that you need somebody really gullible - it's that you need somebody both gullible, and dead-set on not feeling like they've been fooled. Extremely gullible, desperate, mentally ill people are more likely to stick, even when they get hints or straight assessments that it's a scam. At least, that was the impression I got from an old lady who lived near me, who managed to shout down a stream of people telling her that her 'secret agent boyfriend from plymouth' she was sending all her money to wasn't real. I think there's a bit of a parallel to cults like scientology - the more incrementally ridiculous you make the story, the higher the feeling of shame is when you have to own up to being fooled, making some people go in deeper rather than back out.
- asdff 5y agoTo get this approach to work you need to mass email to get over the low hit rate. The next question that follows, is why don't providers crack down on these scammers who need to send mass emails for their numbers to even pencil out? I'm struck this all hasn't happened 25 years ago at this point.
- lokar 5y agoI feel like this has some parallel in the crypto space :)
- mitchdoogle 5y agoGreed can make people do stupid things in any space