Microsoft Helping Nigeria Fight Scammers

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. "

Comments

DIR SIR OR MADAM (someone had to do it)

[Humba]

Chairman tender
Board of nigerian
National petroleum
Coporation (n.n.p.c)
Tel:+234-80-33013920
Fax:+234-1-7597156

Dear:sir/madam,

I guess this letter may come to you as a surprise since i had no
Previous Correspondence with you. I am the chairman tender board of nigeria National Petroleum coporation (nnpc) i got your contact in the course of my Search For a reliable person with whom to handle a very confidential Transaction Involving the transfer of fund valued eight million two hundred Thousand United states dollars ($8.2m) to a safe foreign account.

The above fund in question is not connected with arms, drugs or money
Laundering. It is the product of over invoice on contract awarded in
2005 by nnpc, to Microsoft for providing 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. The
Contract has long been executed and payment of the actual contract
Amount Made to the foreign contractor leaving the balance of $8.2m u.s
Dollars in A dormant account which my colleagues and i now want to transfer out of Nigeria into a reliable foreign account for our personal use.

--H

Whaddya mean, thousands?

[SysKoll]

thousands of pounds by promising a share of the secret multimillion-pound fortune of a deposed African dictator.

Thousands? Only thousands? What a rip-off. My deposed dictator offered me $350 millions for only $500 of participation.

Isn't that a bit like

[Anonymous Coward]

asking McDonalds to solve a food shortage problem in Africa.

MS providing scammers free copies of MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

In hopes that they will use it, significantly slowing down their ability to manage their ill-gotten gains.

Dear Prince Olemeade

[Anonymous Writer]

I am writing to acquire your assistance in recovering significant assets I have acquired from monopolistic business practices. Due to a recent antitrust lawsuit settlement, the funds are being held up by a bunch of government lawyers.

I am willing to pay you $50 million dollars to help me liberate these assets, please provide your banking information so I can wire you the funds.

Sincerely, Bill Gates

Statistics for 1997-2005

[ianscot]

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.)

Check out today's Foxtrot

[pmike_bauer]

On a related note check out today's foxtrot comic.

They asked Microsoft first....

[WoodstockJeff]

... because most of the ones we've received in the past few months are sent by MSN/HOTMAIL users. While many actually used MSN.COM or HOTMAIL.COM accounts, Microsoft has a few hundred "vanity domains", for which there is no accountability whatsoever - attempts to report the spam get bounced, because there is no "abuse@" for these domains, and abuse@hotmail.com will only accept reports of hotmail.com accounts, just as abuse@msn.com will only accept them for msn.com accounts.

It's a nifty little scheme - use one of the vanity domains, and you can send spam for months. The mail is delivered through HOTMAIL.COM servers, so blocking by IP doesn't work. Unless, of course, you are willing to take the colateral damage of blocking all HOTMAIL and MSN customers.

Which, it turns out, might not be much real damage at all...