Firstly- yes, I am a Nigerian. Secondly- No, I am NOT an email spammer, although I am of course very much aware of this unfortunate problem.
I've been a lurker on slashdot for a while now (close to a year), and whenever this topic comes up, I feel more than just a little bit....embarrased. It really is sad that my country should become world-famous for something as hateful as 419.
Now I know that many will probably not see this post at all (being close to 72 hours late and all) but who knows? I just thought I should try and shed some more light on the situation than has been done already.
419 has been a problem in Nigeria for YEARS...the advent of e-mail simply enabled the scamers to spread their wings further beyond our shores. Wealthy Nigerians have since grown wise to the scams, so the boys began to target foreigners, who are generally more trusting and gullible. These days, with the advent of the Internet and programs such as Worldcast, they've turned to spam, and as such have become a worldwide issue.
The truth is, the Government has little or nothing to do with 419 spam. The money made from this is absolute peanuts compared to what they rake in daily by misappropriating crude oil funds.
Similarly, the popular slashdot view that SPAM is Nigeria's main use for the Internet is just plain wrong. While awaiting my compulsory Youth Service scheme upon graduating, I worked at a number of cybercafes as a sysadmin. We had some igbo men (That tribe practically breeds conmen...) come in and pay special rates for 'Night Browsing' which simply meant sending 419 mail. However most of the time what we had were students and people desperate to keep in touch with relatives studying/living abroad, and (get this) anime/game freaks coming to use Imesh and Kazaa. The Biggest source of revenue, by the way, is Net2Phone. We could charge as much as 50 Naira a minute for this and still suffer overcrowding. Remember, this was 1999 before GSM made its Nigerian debut. Even now, Cafes still charge as much as N30 a minute for Net2Phone, and the business is still going strong (as far as I know,that is.I left Cybercafes behind a long time ago and now make a living writing Databases)
Now I'm not trying to downplay the scale of the problem (it is a major one- and simply barring 419-ers from using your cafe isnt the end of the story. One of the cafes I worked at did this, and the spammers simply walked across the road to the next guy and continued.) but it may become easier to understand why it is such a problem when you realise that the perpetrators of this are a relatively small, largely invisible subset of the society. You can't trace them, and you don't know who is one. Time was, 419-ers would share a taxi with you, strike up a conversation, and continue from there. Sometimes they use phone calls. Other times they offer to help you cheat at school. (Uni over here is a cut-throat affair. The schools are overcrowded and competition is extra-keen. Fail at school and you are a failure for life. I'm glad that phase of my life is over.)
I guess I should stop here- I've written a lot considering I dont expect many to read this. Just hoping this would clarify some things for some people and provide another point of view.
Slashdot Mirror
Pshaw. UT? Gimme a break. Go back in time to the time of Quake 1. Dag and Def Rule
I've been a lurker on slashdot for a while now (close to a year), and whenever this topic comes up, I feel more than just a little bit....embarrased. It really is sad that my country should become world-famous for something as hateful as 419.
Now I know that many will probably not see this post at all (being close to 72 hours late and all) but who knows? I just thought I should try and shed some more light on the situation than has been done already.
419 has been a problem in Nigeria for YEARS...the advent of e-mail simply enabled the scamers to spread their wings further beyond our shores. Wealthy Nigerians have since grown wise to the scams, so the boys began to target foreigners, who are generally more trusting and gullible. These days, with the advent of the Internet and programs such as Worldcast, they've turned to spam, and as such have become a worldwide issue.
The truth is, the Government has little or nothing to do with 419 spam. The money made from this is absolute peanuts compared to what they rake in daily by misappropriating crude oil funds.
Similarly, the popular slashdot view that SPAM is Nigeria's main use for the Internet is just plain wrong. While awaiting my compulsory Youth Service scheme upon graduating, I worked at a number of cybercafes as a sysadmin. We had some igbo men (That tribe practically breeds conmen...) come in and pay special rates for 'Night Browsing' which simply meant sending 419 mail. However most of the time what we had were students and people desperate to keep in touch with relatives studying/living abroad, and (get this) anime/game freaks coming to use Imesh and Kazaa. The Biggest source of revenue, by the way, is Net2Phone. We could charge as much as 50 Naira a minute for this and still suffer overcrowding. Remember, this was 1999 before GSM made its Nigerian debut. Even now, Cafes still charge as much as N30 a minute for Net2Phone, and the business is still going strong (as far as I know,that is.I left Cybercafes behind a long time ago and now make a living writing Databases)
Now I'm not trying to downplay the scale of the problem (it is a major one- and simply barring 419-ers from using your cafe isnt the end of the story. One of the cafes I worked at did this, and the spammers simply walked across the road to the next guy and continued.) but it may become easier to understand why it is such a problem when you realise that the perpetrators of this are a relatively small, largely invisible subset of the society. You can't trace them, and you don't know who is one. Time was, 419-ers would share a taxi with you, strike up a conversation, and continue from there. Sometimes they use phone calls. Other times they offer to help you cheat at school. (Uni over here is a cut-throat affair. The schools are overcrowded and competition is extra-keen. Fail at school and you are a failure for life. I'm glad that phase of my life is over.)
I guess I should stop here- I've written a lot considering I dont expect many to read this. Just hoping this would clarify some things for some people and provide another point of view.