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I think this is the paper that originated this theory that Nigerian scammers set out a deliberately bad "offer" in order to increase their signal to noise ratio
by chimprich 3y ago
I think this is the paper that originated this theory that Nigerian scammers set out a deliberately bad "offer" in order to increase their signal to noise ratio. I believe a lot of people have cited this paper as evidence that this is happening.
It seems plausible, but the paper doesn't present any evidence that this is what the scammers were actually doing; it's just a mathematical analysis that such a strategy would be useful.
It also seems conceivable that this paper has become so well known that scammers are now using it as a guide to what strategy to adopt.
- TuringTest 3y agoIt is possible that the technique was not deliberately designed, but it evolved as a particularly successful result in scamming that was then replicated. Maybe the scammers thought "I have tried 50 different mails, and this is the one that got me incredible results"; so this was the one that was popularized, even if the people doing it didn't understand why it worked better than the others.