![\"419-Scam\"](\"http:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/419-scam.jpg\")
Okay, it\u2019s doesn\u2019t have the ring to it that immortalized Lynyrd Skynyrd and the iconic Sweet Home Alabama<\/em>, but as it turns out, it\u2019s okay when things coming out of Nigeria appear a little \u2013 or, in the case of spam, a lot \u2013 broken. The butt<\/a> of many a joke, the Nigerian royalty scam, typically called an \u2018advanced fee\u2019 scam but better known as 419 spam<\/a> (named after the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code that deals with fraudulent activity) has long been laughable and just plain outrageous. This is due in large part to its notoriously atrocious English, which incites images of morons with crayons<\/a> scribbling their first drafts on rubber walls and in large part the vast unlikelihood of the scam\u2019s scenario: a member of the Nigerian royal family, stuck in the horrible position of sitting on several millions of dollars, desperately needing to get the funds out of the country, if only he could find a patsy stupid enough to send him a small good faith money transfer to kick off the process. This example, although not citing Nigeria, is an actual e-mail I received a couple of weeks ago:<\/p>\nHELLO MY BELOVED IN THE LORD.<\/p>\n
I AM MRS. ALICE FLORES DUNU, A NATIONALITY OF BELIZE FORMERLY BRITISH HONDURAS, BORN IN THE STATE OF OHIO USA. I AM LEGALLY MARRIED TO MR. JOSHUA DUNU, A GHANAIN CITIZEN BORN BROUGHT UP IN CANADA, I LIVE IN CANADA WITH MY HUSBAND FOR 32 YEARS BEFORE WE MOVE DOWN TO GHANA WEST AFRICA IN 1985 AFTER MY HUSBAND RETIREMENT IN 1981, I AM 79 YEARS OLD BY THE GRACE OF GOD, I AM A NEW CHRISTIAN CONVERT, SUFFERING FROM LONG TIME CANCER\u2026<\/p>\n
Blah, blah blah and so-on. I don\u2019t know why they feel the need to SHOUT, but crap like this seem like more work than it\u2019s worth. Seriously, who falls for this? Believe it or not, this scam has miraculously reaped success for the 419ers. Two years ago, a 31 year old Nigerian man was sentenced to 12 years in prison<\/a> for scamming more than $1.3 million<\/strong> out of unsuspecting Americans and other foreign nationals. In another case, a woman \u2013 oddly enough, from Sweet Home, Oregon \u2013 is out $400,000<\/a> because of this scam.<\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t make any sense, does it? Well, this week a researcher at Microsoft finally started to make some sense of the 419 scam, and ohhhh man, does it make sense. In the study<\/a> entitled \u201cWhy do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?\u201d Cormac Herley unravels a nasty little secret about the spam artists that seemed so unfathomable, and yet is so obvious. It\u2019s not an easy read \u2013 I suppose you don\u2019t get the title of Principal Researcher without growing accustomed to backing up your data with Calculus \u2013 but it does contain some interesting nuggets. In his study, Herley discovers, the 419 scammers are intentionally dumbing down their message.<\/p>\n Yes, you read that right. The scammers are using stupidity as a weapon, it would seem, narrowing down the actual number of people who respond to this type of scam to only the most gullible Internet users. By keeping it dumb, Herley discovered, the scammers aren\u2019t faced with high numbers of false positives \u2013 people who respond at first because the e-mail appears to be a legitimate request, but then quickly catch on to the scam. As a result, the scammers aren\u2019t wasting their time on those who can\u2019t be scammed, and instead prey only on those who can be considered to be legitimate targets.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy so little imagination?\u201d Herley queries. Why don\u2019t Nigerian scammers claim to be from some other country? Stupidity, he points out, is an unsatisfactory answer. \u201cThe scam requires skill in manipulation, considerable inventiveness and mastery of a language that is non-native for a majority of Nigerians.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, the scam is designed to weed out those who might make the scammers lives more difficult. \u2018Nigerian Scam\u2019, Herley points out, \u201cis one of five suggested auto-completes in a Google search for \u201cNigeria\u201d If the goal was to maximize response to e-mails, it hardly makes sense to mention Nigeria. But who are the most likely targets? \u201cSince the scam is entirely one of manipulation he would like to attack (i.e., enter into correspondence with) only those who are most gullible.\u201d<\/p>\n Holy crap. We knew<\/a> they aren\u2019t nearly as dumb<\/a> as they appear to be, but this is downright devious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay, it\u2019s doesn\u2019t have the ring to it that immortalized Lynyrd Skynyrd and the iconic Sweet Home Alabama, but as it turns out, it\u2019s okay… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-spam","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1803,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/1803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Scam\u2019s the Thing…<\/strong><\/h2>\n