Microsoft Helping Nigeria Fight Scammers

Posted by Zonk on Friday October 14, 2005 @07:16AM from the keep-my-inbox-clean dept.

encodics writes "News.com is carrying a story today about how Nigeria is asking Microsoft for help in fighting scammers." From the article: "Microsoft will provide technical expertise, training and other security resources to Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which is tasked with fighting cybercrime in the country. Nigeria was initially slow to respond to the problem of '419' e-mail scammers operating in the country, who were duping unsuspecting Internet users out of thousands of pounds by promising a share of the secret multimillion-pound fortune of a deposed African dictator. "

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Statistics for 1997-2005 by ianscot · 2005-10-14 07:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

From the National Internet Fraud Watch site, here are some:
Internet Fraud Statistics from 1997 through the first half of 2005

According to those Nigerian money scams were 8% of the total, with an average of two-and-a-half grand lost per victim, in 2004.
(I can't say this group isn't overstating the problem to boost its own importance, but those are stats, anyway.)

--
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.