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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMaybe you should reply to that Nigerian scam email?
"A proposal offering a more realistic scenario might generate more replies, but most of them wouldn't pan out. The effort of sorting through them to find the real suckers would undermine the scheme's profitability.
Instead, by screaming "This is another absurd instance of the familiar Nigerian scam," the fraudsters are filtering out what to them is spamresponses from suspicious people they don't want to deal withand "letting through" only those most likely to play along.
The fewer potential victims in the world, the more precisely the scammers must target them, and thus the more absurd and easy-to-spot the attacks should be.
The Nigerian scammers aren't alone in using this approach. Phishing attacks, like the urgent emails from the "IT Support Team" requesting our passwords to avert some Internet calamity, are so hackneyed that they likely ensnare only the extremely naive or credulous."
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"A more effective solution, Mr. Herley suggests, would require considering the goal of the scammers. Increasing the number of responses to their emails, he shows, can reduce profits, as long as those responses come from people who never send money. Such "scam baiters" already exist (the community website "419 Eater," named after the Nigerian law that governs fraud, offers tips and support). The more scam baiters, the lower the average return to the scammers on each attack and the less incentive they have to continue the scam."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443931404577548813973954518?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10000872396390443931404577548813973954518.html
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Plus a Mercedes, and I was asked to pick the color (white, black, or gray).
And all I had to do was to go to the drugstore and buy a $199 "Green Dot Money Card", call them back, and await further instructions. This was to cover the "taxes" on the "prize".
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)If the rent is too good to be true and the person starts talking about god when they respond to you, run the other way.
They like to find actual houses with real addresses and pretend to be out of the country on a religious mission- asking you to send money and they will send the keys. I figured it out pretty quick, found the listing of the house for sale and called the real estate agent, but I am sure others have fallen for this with dreams of being able to afford to rent a nice house.
brewens
(13,349 posts)best way to handle it. I suppose with those email scams, there isn't much point to alerting authorities. Still, it can't hurt to play idiot and make them think you're taking the cheese! String them along, waiting for payday or your tax return, maybe about to inherit a chunk of money, whatever to milk it for a week or so at least.