4 ms·

this idea has been kicking around for a long time, and sounds nice, but is there any data to support it? A lot of the most visible misspelling seems designed to

• yen223 4y ago
  This idea was made popular by the Microsoft paper that was linked in the article. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/WhyFromNigeria.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... However the paper itself doesn't present any evidence around the scammer's intention. Rather it presents a mathematical model under which it would make sense for a scammer to intentionally exclude a large swathe of victims, and it posited that misspellings is a way to achieve it.
• bigDinosaur 4y ago
  There is no concrete evidence for it e.g. someone that we can trust who was a scammer who can confirm this was a conscious strategy.
• heavyset_go 4y ago
  I used to buy into the idea, but it increasingly grates my intuition as time goes on. I'm at a point that I believe much of the misspelling, poor grammar, etc are not intentional. If the same scammers were better at what they did, they'd snare more marks. I think these scammers are only capable of exploiting the bottom of the barrel when it comes to discerning audiences, though.