“Apparenty every single person in Nigeria has tens of millions of dollars they don’t know what to do with and half of them are Drs.”
You would think so, based on how many supposedly-intelligent folks in the US have fallen for these scams!
Even though most Americans are severely geographically ignorant, most of them probably know that Nigeria is a third-world country in Africa that is plagued with poverty, disease, and a weak economy. According to the figures that I was able to find, the median annual income in Nigeria is ~$330 (in US dollars).
And yet, some people choose to believe what is…literally…unbelieveable.
Due to their own greed, they want to believe that an unknown individual, with an unknown background, living thousands of miles away, has somehow divined that this particular unknown American would be a trustworthy person for enacting a monetary scam that will enrich both parties.
I would never say that the victims of the classic Nigerian scam deserve to be cheated, but…How can these folks be so @#%&!* stupid?
On a related note, I used to occasionally receive one of these obvious scam e-mails. However, since switching to Norton Anti-Virus and using the highest security settings, I have not received even one of these scam e-mails for quite a few years. I also don’t get e-mails purportedly selling non-prescription Viagra, or the e-mails from lonely, horney women who know that they want to meet me, or any other non-legitimate e-mails.
If you are getting lots of spam, that tells me that you need to increase the level of protection on your computer!
I would never say that the victims of the classic Nigerian scam deserve to be cheated, but…How can these folks be so @#%&!* stupid?
One of the internet scams that was going around was these people would befriend someone through some social network site and then talk them into accepting packages for them and then ship them to their place of business in some other country (Russia was the most common place).
Dateline did a story on them…and found this one schmuck who was convinced this woman (from Russia) was his girlfriend and they were going to be married soon. He never met her or even spoke to her…just e-mails. He was in his mid 50’s…never married before…lived with his Sister…about 5’4 and weighed in at a little under 300lbs. She was this 20 something bathing Suit model from Russia who was madly in love with him.
I don’t know…maybe it’s me…but I wasn’t convinced she was actually in love with him.
If you are getting lots of spam, that tells me that you need to increase the level of protection on your computer!
Norton isn’t going to stop the e-mail spamming. It will however stop any viruses that my be present in the e-mail. I still get the spam…they are just automatically put in my spam folder. My main e-mail account is with Comcast…and they do a decent job of preventing MOST of these emails from even getting to me. But they the spammers keep changing their attack methods and they slip through. New filters are put in place and that stops them until they change their attack methods again.
Mike–Whether it is Norton, or my ISP (Verizon), all I know is that I do not receive any of these unwanted e-mails. Some of the e-mails that I receive do go to the spam folder, but these are usually mass e-mails from merchants with whom I do business.
It has been at least a few years since I have received any unwanted/scam/spurious/obscene e-mails!
It was in the ISP’s best interest to stop these unwanted emails. Even if every computer connected to their system had spam filtering and anti-virus software that would detect these emails and remove them…the problem of sending MILLIONS of spam mail to MILLIONS of customers every day was really taxing their network. It was better to filter those emails out at their end so they didn’t clutter network traffic.
Another Craiglist scam goes like this. A person calls and claims to be handicapped. He has seen the item listed and wants to buy the item. He went to his bank and the bank made out a cashier’s check for ten times the amount by accident. Suppose the item was $50. The bank made the check out accidentally for $500. The seller is expected to supply the change. Of course, the cashier’s check is phony and the buyer gets both the item and the money.
My brother tried to sell an oil furnace on Craig’s list and received a call as described above. He told the potential buyer he had to have the check for the correct amount. Of course, the caller hung up.
My brother wishes he had let the caller send someone to pick up the furnace and said “It’s yours, free”. He would then have gotten rid of the furnace. My brother isn’t a great salesman. He had one caller who wanted the furnace for an old Greyhound bus that had been converted to a camper. The caller wanted to know if the furnace would operate in a horizontal position–he was going to put the furnace in the luggage compartment of the bus and run it on diesel fuel. My brother talked him out of buying the furnce for that use.
I don’t get any Nigerian Emails. I did get a call from a guy though that said I won $20,000. All I had to do was provide him with some information so he could process the check. I said that’s Ok, I really didn’t what I do with it anyway.
I got another call one night and all the guy said was “the black duck is flying at midnight” and hung up. Always wondered about that one.
I have been thinking about listing two automobile radios that are under my workbench on Craig’s list. One is an A.M. radio from a 1951 Studebaker that someone gave me 35 years ago. The other is a Western Auto aftermarket A.M. radio that fits Chevrolets from 1941 through 1948. My father-in-law bought this radio for the 1941 Chevrolet which he purchased when he came home from service after WW II. When my wife and I were closing out their house, we found this radio in the attic. If a scammer comes along with the phony cashier’s check, I’ll tell him to keep his money and I’ll give him the radios. It seems that the people who restore cars today obtain radios with face plates like the original, but have modern solid state circuitry and tune the F.M. band as well.
On the topic of old car radios, I was just reading a few days ago that one of the most readily-available NOS car radios is the one specially made for the Tucker Torpedo.
It seems that Tucker had contracted with Motorola for radios, and Motorola had cranked-up production in anticipation of the start-up of the Tucker assemblyline. Unfortunately, auto production ceased after ~50 pilot cars were hand-assembled, and Motorola was essentially stuck with a LOT of these radios that would not fit in other car dashboards.