5 ms·

I suppose it boils down to this "By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts t

I suppose it boils down to this "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."

s_kilk 14y ago
It seems so obvious now but I never realised this on my own. I suppose the take-away lesson is that there is an art to even the most (seemingly) hare-brained schemes.
- jonah 14y ago
  I can't see that they'd continue doing it if they didn't get some sort of result. At the least, a very small number of valid email addresses, an even smaller number of postal mailing addresses, and a vanishingly small number of financial interactions.
  - nmridul 14y ago
    I have read in local news about few people falling for some of the Nigerian scams. The issue is that only some cases come out, others feel it better to hide their foolishness and not report.
  - kamjam 14y ago
    It's like all those stupid adverts you see on TV for mega-extreme-fitness-workout or call-meet-super-sexy-local-girl. Always wondered who would actually but this rubbish or call those stupid premium rate numbers, but the very fact there are so many of them must mean someone does!
    - larrys 14y ago
      "for mega-extreme-fitness-workout or call-meet-super-sexy-local-girl" That's actually a little different. When people are desperate they are willing to go with emotion instead of rationality. That's why they travel overseas for miracle cures even though rationally what they are doing doesn't make any sense at all. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Primetime/story?id=482292&page=1#.T-IP_RztD2s http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Primetime/story?id=482292&p... There is also the greed factor which is somewhat similar and why people go for "to good to be true" things if the price is low enough. There is a blogger who I will not name that has chosen to go with godaddy $9 hosting for his quite popular blog (he used to pay $100 for a VPS or something like that) and he truly believes that gd will give him unlimited everything at that price point just because that's what the site says. While he is not particularly savvy in terms of hosting and technical things (by his own admission) his greed (if I can call it that) makes him overlook and ignore the obvious. I'm sure someone can point out the exact psych principles that are involved here.
      - xamuel 14y ago
        Those ridiculously too-good-to-be-true hosting deals are awesome if you've got a blog that nobody ever reads. The instant one of your posts goes viral, expect your page to be unceremoniously shut down with no call or email to you. Which is of course the worst possible time for it to be shut down-- while it's on front pages of social aggregators and such. Source: personal experience (Bluehost, not GoDaddy)
      - jonah 14y ago
        Questioning both the GP's cases and your's require not only critical thinking but also a little domain knowledge. Reading "unlimited bandwidth" doesn't imply that's not the case unless you know from experience or hearsay that there are heavy conditions. Same thing with "lonely girls in your down", how am I to know that's not true on face value in this particular area and that rather it's a common come-on. I think we like to think optimistically and assume people mean what they say in general.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Scamming is not remotely a hare-brained scheme. It's an incredibly reliable method for getting rich by exploiting the gullible if you know how to do it. That "if" is a huge if. And there's the whole ethics thing.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > getting rich by exploiting the gullible And gullible needs to be emphasized. A lot of people seem to think scammers only get the greedy, which is not true. For example, how are fake charities targeting the greedy? Or the grandparent scam? [1] [1] http://ago.mo.gov/ConsumerCorner/encyclopedia/grandparents-scam.htm http://ago.mo.gov/ConsumerCorner/encyclopedia/grandparents-s...
praptak 14y ago
Hats off to scambaiters who do their best to tilt the ratio back.
- lancefisher 14y ago
  Yes! Check out http://www.419eater.com/ http://www.419eater.com/ if you don't already know about scambaiters.
  - michaelbuckbee 14y ago
    Then checkout This American Life for an episode on scambaiters that leaves you unsure exactly what to think about the whole mess: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/363/enforcers http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/363/e...
    - derleth 14y ago
      Nigerian scammers have killed people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_scam#Murder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_scam#Murder
      - MartinCron 14y ago
        There's a huge difference between saying "tormenting these scammers, vigilante-style is unsettling and perhaps distasteful" (the takeaway I got from the This American Life story) and saying "Nigerian scammers are good people". They can be bad people, some of their number may have murdered people, but I don't think that makes any and all actions toward them justified.
  - neutronicus 14y ago
    That site is really depressing. When they make him woodcarvings and take pictures and read audiobooks for him, you realize those people are just completely desperate and trying to make ends meet any way they can.
kamjam 14y ago
It's survival of the fittest, except you looking for the most stupid of the herd.
- brudgers 14y ago
  The smarter and more sophisticated a mark believes they are, the broader the attack surface. Madoff's victims didn't think they were gullible.
  - pyre 14y ago
    1. Madoff had a good reputation. He wasn't a random email from a person in another country. 2. Madoff's 'customers' mostly believed that he must be doing something not quite kosher, but they thought they could still make money off of it.
    - chipsy 14y ago
      Don't underestimate the herd effect, too. Once you get a group to buy into a scam, they'll form a support group to rationalize it to each other, no matter how ridiculous it gets to an outsider.
    - brudgers 14y ago
      His reputation allowed his victims to self self select in the same way that a Nigerian scam artists do. His victims' greed worked against them in the same way that greed works in a Nigerian scam.
    - damoncali 14y ago
      Madoff's 'customers' mostly believed that he must be doing something not quite kosher, but they thought they could still make money off of it. This is a significant thing. My anecdotal understanding (from talking to my wall st friends) is that his clients basically thought he was screwing someone else (with his trading operations) so that his fund could do so well. I wonder if this effect also takes hold in Nigerian emails scams. Would their success rate go up if they implied they were screwing someone else out of the money?
antninja 14y ago
It's very much like the predators who detect and hunt the weakest prey in a herd. Sects target the weakest people too. It's not just the email scammers.
Legion 14y ago
This pretty much explains the behavior of the scammers posing as "Microsoft Support" that geeks and techs love to laugh at and post funny recordings from.
jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
Many ads (including a lot in Facebook) for cellphone money-sucking subscriptions operate in the exact same way. Writing such a stupid message that only very unintelligent people would click and therefore getting the best ROI they can (when they pay per click).

s_kilk 14y ago

It seems so obvious now but I never realised this on my own. I suppose the take-away lesson is that there is an art to even the most (seemingly) hare-brained schemes.

jonah 14y ago
I can't see that they'd continue doing it if they didn't get some sort of result. At the least, a very small number of valid email addresses, an even smaller number of postal mailing addresses, and a vanishingly small number of financial interactions.
- nmridul 14y ago
  I have read in local news about few people falling for some of the Nigerian scams. The issue is that only some cases come out, others feel it better to hide their foolishness and not report.
- kamjam 14y ago
  It's like all those stupid adverts you see on TV for mega-extreme-fitness-workout or call-meet-super-sexy-local-girl. Always wondered who would actually but this rubbish or call those stupid premium rate numbers, but the very fact there are so many of them must mean someone does!
  - larrys 14y ago
    "for mega-extreme-fitness-workout or call-meet-super-sexy-local-girl" That's actually a little different. When people are desperate they are willing to go with emotion instead of rationality. That's why they travel overseas for miracle cures even though rationally what they are doing doesn't make any sense at all. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Primetime/story?id=482292&page=1#.T-IP_RztD2s http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Primetime/story?id=482292&p... There is also the greed factor which is somewhat similar and why people go for "to good to be true" things if the price is low enough. There is a blogger who I will not name that has chosen to go with godaddy $9 hosting for his quite popular blog (he used to pay $100 for a VPS or something like that) and he truly believes that gd will give him unlimited everything at that price point just because that's what the site says. While he is not particularly savvy in terms of hosting and technical things (by his own admission) his greed (if I can call it that) makes him overlook and ignore the obvious. I'm sure someone can point out the exact psych principles that are involved here.
    - xamuel 14y ago
      Those ridiculously too-good-to-be-true hosting deals are awesome if you've got a blog that nobody ever reads. The instant one of your posts goes viral, expect your page to be unceremoniously shut down with no call or email to you. Which is of course the worst possible time for it to be shut down-- while it's on front pages of social aggregators and such. Source: personal experience (Bluehost, not GoDaddy)
    - jonah 14y ago
      Questioning both the GP's cases and your's require not only critical thinking but also a little domain knowledge. Reading "unlimited bandwidth" doesn't imply that's not the case unless you know from experience or hearsay that there are heavy conditions. Same thing with "lonely girls in your down", how am I to know that's not true on face value in this particular area and that rather it's a common come-on. I think we like to think optimistically and assume people mean what they say in general.
saraid216 14y ago
Scamming is not remotely a hare-brained scheme. It's an incredibly reliable method for getting rich by exploiting the gullible if you know how to do it. That "if" is a huge if. And there's the whole ethics thing.
- derleth 14y ago
  > getting rich by exploiting the gullible And gullible needs to be emphasized. A lot of people seem to think scammers only get the greedy, which is not true. For example, how are fake charities targeting the greedy? Or the grandparent scam? [1] [1] http://ago.mo.gov/ConsumerCorner/encyclopedia/grandparents-scam.htm http://ago.mo.gov/ConsumerCorner/encyclopedia/grandparents-s...

praptak 14y ago

Hats off to scambaiters who do their best to tilt the ratio back.

lancefisher 14y ago
Yes! Check out http://www.419eater.com/ http://www.419eater.com/ if you don't already know about scambaiters.
- michaelbuckbee 14y ago
  Then checkout This American Life for an episode on scambaiters that leaves you unsure exactly what to think about the whole mess: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/363/enforcers http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/363/e...
  - derleth 14y ago
    Nigerian scammers have killed people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_scam#Murder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_scam#Murder
    - MartinCron 14y ago
      There's a huge difference between saying "tormenting these scammers, vigilante-style is unsettling and perhaps distasteful" (the takeaway I got from the This American Life story) and saying "Nigerian scammers are good people". They can be bad people, some of their number may have murdered people, but I don't think that makes any and all actions toward them justified.
- neutronicus 14y ago
  That site is really depressing. When they make him woodcarvings and take pictures and read audiobooks for him, you realize those people are just completely desperate and trying to make ends meet any way they can.

kamjam 14y ago

It's survival of the fittest, except you looking for the most stupid of the herd.

brudgers 14y ago
The smarter and more sophisticated a mark believes they are, the broader the attack surface. Madoff's victims didn't think they were gullible.
- pyre 14y ago
  1. Madoff had a good reputation. He wasn't a random email from a person in another country. 2. Madoff's 'customers' mostly believed that he must be doing something not quite kosher, but they thought they could still make money off of it.
  - chipsy 14y ago
    Don't underestimate the herd effect, too. Once you get a group to buy into a scam, they'll form a support group to rationalize it to each other, no matter how ridiculous it gets to an outsider.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    His reputation allowed his victims to self self select in the same way that a Nigerian scam artists do. His victims' greed worked against them in the same way that greed works in a Nigerian scam.
  - damoncali 14y ago
    Madoff's 'customers' mostly believed that he must be doing something not quite kosher, but they thought they could still make money off of it. This is a significant thing. My anecdotal understanding (from talking to my wall st friends) is that his clients basically thought he was screwing someone else (with his trading operations) so that his fund could do so well. I wonder if this effect also takes hold in Nigerian emails scams. Would their success rate go up if they implied they were screwing someone else out of the money?

antninja 14y ago

It's very much like the predators who detect and hunt the weakest prey in a herd. Sects target the weakest people too. It's not just the email scammers.

Legion 14y ago

This pretty much explains the behavior of the scammers posing as "Microsoft Support" that geeks and techs love to laugh at and post funny recordings from.

jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago

Many ads (including a lot in Facebook) for cellphone money-sucking subscriptions operate in the exact same way. Writing such a stupid message that only very unintelligent people would click and therefore getting the best ROI they can (when they pay per click).