Slashdot Mirror
Dateline: Abuja; Nigeria Fights Email Scam
dosten writes "Computerworld.com is reporting that the Nigerian government is tired of being known as the Spam/Scam capital of the world and setup a web site to combat the common email scam.
The web site is almost as funny as the Spam Letters. There is even a place to report your victim "experiences" so they can be published.
One of the "coming soon" features will be a lineup of bad guys so you can avoid them in case you end up in Nigeria to collect your loot."
Could we, for a change, try slashdotting the spammers instead of those trying to fight them?
fellas,
Who came up with the idea of linking to a third world website? good grief, you know the telcos there can barely handle a slashdotting, much less a single website.
BTW, I am constantly amazed at the sheer stupidity of the people of this earth. Reminds me of the old vegas scam: I have a bunch of counterfit chips, you give me $1000-2000 for them, but since I can't go inside because I have been banned, you cash them for me while I take your money and run. Nifty...uninformed people often receive nasty wake-up calls...then they tend to be like the rest of us, wary and skeptical.
Sent from your iPad.
Here is how I was told that this scam works:
1. You respond with an account number. They make a deposite to the account just like they said they would.
2. They come back to you and say "Please give us back $X of the money we sent you". Since you have the money in your account you write them a big fat check.
3. After a few big fat checks clear your bank, you you find out from your bank that the first big deposit did not auctually clear, you now have an account that is overdrawn because of all those big fat checks.
And since your name is the only name on the account you are entirly responsable!
[End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...] - Larry Wall in Configure from the perl
Unfortunately, if you examine the problem from an information-theoretical viewpoint you'll find that that is impossible. Shannon's basic theorem was that noise is a property of communication. When you communicate, you have noise as a byproduct no matter what you do. Email is communication, spam is the noise. Web traffic is communication, popups are the noise. Slashdot is communication, trolls and crapflooders are the noise.
One possibility for a solution is to reduce the communication itself via filters. For instance, some central agency could set up a computer to monitor all communication and delete targetted email messages or web traffic. As an act of communication-reduction this would guarantee at least a small amount of relief from noise. That's why I support Ashcroft in his plan to set the FBI up with Carnivore.
I think this is awesome. From http://www.ift.org/extra/scam.shtml:
This has become a huge industry. According to some published reports, this has become the third largest industry in Nigeria. During the last thirteen years, there are estimates that the scam has taken in $5,000,000,000 in total, and hundreds of millions of dollars every year. These estimates may be underreported, as many victims may not wish to admit that they have been defrauded.
If taking money from gullible people can net you that much, well... More power to them!