Reverse Scamming 419ers
I visited that 419eaters site, and I must say I have really mixed feelings about what the people are doing there. It's certainly unethical for Nigerians to try and make a living by bilking foreigners with elaborate schemes that promise vast riches in return for an advance fee. But Nigeria is a very poor country, with high unemployment, where people are forced by economic circumstances to do almost anything to try and feed their families. I see no reason to be proud of reverse-scamming a Nigerian out of $80 when it might be his entire family's food money for the month. Only idiots fall for Nigerian Spam. (well, aside from that lady who worked at a bank, and sent some Nigerian $1.3 million of the bank's money) It seems to me the relationship between affluent Americans and poor Nigerians is an example of a dominant class/subordinate class structure, and in such a structure, the subordinate class has rights, and the dominant class has responsibilities. It is beneath the station of those those with the power to define, describe, and profile the world to pick the pocket of some poor black man in Africa, while encouraging him to pose for funny pictures that will be laughed at on some comfortably well off white person's web site. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Eric Cordian wrote:
But Nigeria is a very poor country, with high unemployment, where people are forced by economic circumstances to do almost anything to try and feed their families. I see no reason to be proud of reverse-scamming a Nigerian out of $80 when it might be his entire family's food money for the month. Presumably these are the Nigerians who have only $80 for food that month, yet somehow can still afford to bulkspam thousands of inboxes each day, process bank transactions and take part in international phone calls. hell, if that sort of internet access and telephony is so cheap it doesn't make a noticable dent in a $80/month income, I definitely should move there myself!
David Howe writes:
Presumably these are the Nigerians who have only $80 for food that month, yet somehow can still afford to bulkspam thousands of inboxes each day, process bank transactions and take part in international phone calls.
Email is free. That is why we have a spam problem. If email required 37 cent stamps, it would be no more annoying than junk snailmail. I would suspect that after initial contact is made, and a "fee" is transferred, part of that money can be used to fund the appearance of the scam, and still make a profit.
hell, if that sort of internet access and telephony is so cheap it doesn't make a noticable dent in a $80/month income, I definitely should move there myself!
I think this sort of scamming is a very highly leveraged activity, with an occasional large payoff, like playing a slot machine with the overall odds slightly in your favor. It probably doesn't take too much before these guys are out in the street with nothing. Given the number of people worldwide currently in that situation, I probably won't behave in ways that increase it, even if the person in question is trying to pick my pocket. Visionary Philosophers should have higher moral standards than the scum of the earth. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Troll bait - yum! But this discussion is already partly my fault, so I guess I'll bite. It's true that most of these scammers have chosen a life of non-violent theft that's more moral than some of the things they could have done for money, like being bandits, or joining the armies of the corrupt dictators they're pretending to be the kids of. That's still no excuse, and they're in no position to complain if they get ripped off. Furthermore, some suckers occasionally lose enough money to them that they come to Nigeria looking for it, or come to Nigeria to get their big payoffs, and some of the scammers demonstrate that their non-violence is not based on principle but on opportunity, so the suckers either get kidnapped for ransom, killed, or both. But let's look a bit farther into the victims of these scams. - Ordinary people get their time wasted by the volume of this stuff. -- If scammers don't mind wasting our time, they're in no position to complain if some "sucker" wastes their time by asking for a photograph of them dancing around with a chicken or whatever, and while they're doing that, they're not wasting my time. - ISPs get their money wasted carrying this stuff. -- Scammers are in no position to complain if they occasionally get sued, or if their cybercafes get sued or cut off from the net and go out of business. - Greedy suckers who don't mind accepting a cut of the money from the classic "corrupt murderous dictator" or "corrupt construction company"'s take. There are some people who'd contend that taking these people's money is a _good_ thing, just like taking the scammers' money is, but certainly they deserve whatever happens to them. Their wives and kids may or may not deserve it, but the beauty of the classic 419 scam is that they're unable to go to the police because they're as guilty as the scammers. It's too bad that the only way for these suckers to lose big money is for the scammers to get it, because otherwise it's kind of fun. - Gullible suckers who actually believe the less immoral versions of the scam: "You've won the lottery", "My church needs money", "I'm dying and have no heirs and want to give my money away". Ripping off these people is wrong, and in many cases it's elderly people's life savings that they've got no way to replace, and the lying scum who are trying to rip them off deserve anything that happens to them, especially if it takes them out of action before they succeed and gets them revealed to their friends, families, and business acquaintances as incompetent thieves. It's more likely to succeed than complaining to the Nigerian police, but if the police actually _did_ anything more severe than demanding a cut of the profits, it would be much worse for the scammers and their families than simply losing money and getting laughed out of the cybercafe and Western Union office. One good reason for operating a 419 scam out of a Netherlands cybercafe is that nobody's trying to impose Islamic law and cut your hand off... Evolution in action is certainly a good start here. - There's also a middle ground of suckers, e.g. the ones who aren't accepting money from anything obviously criminal, but who should know bloody well that they probably don't have an uncle Fred <suckers'-last-name-here> prospecting for oil in Nigeria for whom they're the next of kin, and that accepting the money rather than finding the "real" relatives who deserve it is dishonest, though it's ostensibly going to go to somebody who has just as little actual claim on the money, like the local government, so what the heck. The scammers who try this one certainly deserve to get on other spammers' lists, lose a few bucks, and be encouraged to have embarrassing photos of themselves posted on the net.
Eric Cordian wrote:
Email is free. That is why we have a spam problem. If email required 37 cent stamps, it would be no more annoying than junk snailmail. it might be free in america - but it isn't here in the UK even at low bandwidths - say, 56K. The sort of bandwidth a professional spammer uses doesn't come cheap on any scale, and back when I was on dialup, the amount of spam I get now (expressed in bytes) would probably have been about 1/3 of my *total* traffic back then. These days of course I can be content to watch my filters remove the majority of it - but I still don't appreciate having to waste bandwidth downloading it.
I would suspect that after initial contact is made, and a "fee" is transferred, part of that money can be used to fund the appearance of the scam, and still make a profit. True - so what you are saying is that we aren't *actually* taking the spammer's $80, but money they took from some poor sucker who got spammed earlier?
I think this sort of scamming is a very highly leveraged activity, with an occasional large payoff, like playing a slot machine with the overall odds slightly in your favor. It probably doesn't take too much before these guys are out in the street with nothing. I am trying to think of a reason why this would be a bad thing.
Given the number of people worldwide currently in that situation, I probably won't behave in ways that increase it, even if the person in question is trying to pick my pocket. I agree that spamming 419'ers don't deserve being out on the streets with nothing - but only because I would prefer to see them (and all spammers) being slowly disembowelled with red hot hooks......
Visionary Philosophers should have higher moral standards than the scum of the earth. Ah. ok, that Explains it then - I am not a visionary anything :)
Eric Cordian wrote:
It's certainly unethical for Nigerians to try and make a living by bilking foreigners with elaborate schemes that promise vast riches in return for an advance fee.
Granted.
But Nigeria is a very poor country, with high unemployment, where people are forced by economic circumstances to do almost anything to try and feed their families. I see no reason to be proud of reverse-scamming a Nigerian out of $80 when it might be his entire family's food money for the month.
The 419 scam has been going on for the best part of half a century. The advent of the net and email has only allowed it to spread farther and wider, while law enforcement has been unable to stem it significantly. If reverse-scamming some Nigerian fraudster out of the month's food budget incents him to seek out legal means of income, that's one less 419er. If a few of his friends drop their fraud careers after seeing one of them get taken, that's more ex-419ers.
It seems to me the relationship between affluent Americans and poor Nigerians is an example of a dominant class/subordinate class structure, and in such a structure, the subordinate class has rights, and the dominant class has responsibilities.
Including the responsibility to tacitly underwrite a massive, national-scale fraud campaign? Somehow, I don't think so.
It is beneath the station of those those with the power to define, describe, and profile the world to pick the pocket of some poor black man in Africa, while encouraging him to pose for funny pictures that will be laughed at on some comfortably well off white person's web site.
But it's the proper station of that poor black African to attempt picking the pocket of any number of comfortably well-off white people? 419ers are criminals. They steal money by dint of deception. They break the social contract. I can't get too worked up about turning the tables on them. Think of it as evolution in action. -- Roy M. Silvernail is roy@rant-central.com, and you're not Never Forget: It's Only 1's and 0's! SpamAssassin->procmail->/dev/null->bliss http://www.rant-central.com
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 14:41, Eric Cordian wrote:
Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
Think of it as evolution in action.
I think we've identified another applicant on the short list for Tim May's old job. :)
But I didn't come right out and *say* they need killing. :) -- Roy M. Silvernail is roy@rant-central.com, and you're not Never Forget: It's Only 1's and 0's! SpamAssassin->procmail->/dev/null->bliss http://www.rant-central.com
At 5:24 PM -0400 6/11/04, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
But I didn't come right out and *say* they need killing. :)
See below... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "When I was your age we didn't have Tim May! We had to be paranoid on our own! And we were grateful!" --Alan Olsen
What a bleeding-heart moron you are, Eric! Eric Cordian wrote:
I visited that 419eaters site, and I must say I have really mixed feelings about what the people are doing there.
It's certainly unethical for Nigerians to try and make a living by bilking foreigners with elaborate schemes that promise vast riches in return for an advance fee.
But Nigeria is a very poor country, with high unemployment, where people are forced by economic circumstances to do almost anything to try and feed their families. I see no reason to be proud of reverse-scamming a Nigerian out of $80 when it might be his entire family's food money for the month.
Only idiots fall for Nigerian Spam. (well, aside from that lady who worked at a bank, and sent some Nigerian $1.3 million of the bank's money)
It seems to me the relationship between affluent Americans and poor Nigerians is an example of a dominant class/subordinate class structure, and in such a structure, the subordinate class has rights, and the dominant class has responsibilities.
So the savages have a right to try to scam us, and we fat, rich Americans (at least us white ones, maybe the black ones never receive the 419 scams) should either give them some $$, or at least not try to stop the scams...
It is beneath the station of those those with the power to define, describe, and profile the world to pick the pocket of some poor black man in Africa, while encouraging him to pose for funny pictures that will be laughed at on some comfortably well off white person's web site.
It's tough to have a fair debate with you, when you resort to using some extrasensory psychic powers which I am lacking.
Eric Cordian wrote:
But Nigeria is a very poor country, with high unemployment, where people are forced by economic circumstances to do almost anything to try and feed their families.
The 419ers aren't the starving poor - they know exactly what they are doing and have got the resources to do it. And they have no scruples about ripping off fellow Africans either. Getting rid of them might be doing the majority of Nigerians a favour.
It seems to me the relationship between affluent Americans and poor Nigerians is an example of a dominant class/subordinate class structure, and in such a structure, the subordinate class has rights, and the dominant class has responsibilities.
Nigeria's a big country. Nearly everyone there is poor. But there are still a great many rich. And not many of them got rich honestly.
participants (7)
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Bill Stewart -
Dave Howe -
Eric Cordian -
ken -
R. A. Hettinga -
Roy M. Silvernail -
Tim