OT - My First Nigerian Scam Email

[El_Phil]

700 posts. Woot.

The easiest way is to get people to stop responding. If no-one responded to scams and spam it would stop. But how you ask? Well we could try education, or we could let natural selection run its course. Most people who get scammed once probably wont get caught again, those who do will soon be so poor they can't afford internet access.

Mind you that could be quiet slow, maybe education would be better.

[Xrati]

When I get those e-mails, I just wish I could write a virus and send it back to them trashing their computers. But alas, I'm not that sharp!

From what I do understand, most of those e-mails come from prisons where the inmates are sending these things out and running scams from prison! Wouldn't be great if prisons were for prisoners and not Gates wannabe's!

[Atrocities]

Yes, I was being facious in my statement. What we really need is permission to track these scamer emails down and shut down the sites that send them out in bulk.

[Baron Munchausen]

Xrati said:
When I get those e-mails, I just wish I could write a virus and send it back to them trashing their computers. But alas, I'm not that sharp!

From what I do understand, most of those e-mails come from prisons where the inmates are sending these things out and running scams from prison! Wouldn't be great if prisons were for prisoners and not Gates wannabe's!

Sometimes prisoners are found to be running scams from within prisons. Most of these scams, whether '419' appeals for a 'business relationship' or phishing for account info or plain old advertising spam come from overseas. Many of the spammers have been traced back to the US, it is true, but most of the other stuff does come from gangs over seas. The Nigerians are still a major source if not the largest single source of the '419' scams. Russian organized crime is a very big force in phishing.

The best revenge you can get on all of them is to REPORT THEM.

Use the 'view source' command on your mail reader and find where they actually came from. Then send the source with the full headers to abuse@domain.name and/or postmaster@domain.name and you'll stand a very good chance of getting it stopped even if the scammers are out of reach of the authorities in the country where the ISP is located. Some ISPs have special methods for reporting abuse. Yahoo! for example has a web page that I use constantly. I guess lots of s(c|p)ammers like the convenience of a Yahoo! email account. When I get a scam/spam with a return address in a Yahoo! domain I go to: http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/abuse/cgi_abuse and fill out the form.

Phishing is slightly more difficult. You have to go to the site for the bank or whatever business is being spoofed and get their report address. I've got the eBay, and Paypal fraud addresses permanently in my address book as well as the addresses for my bank and credit card company.

It's annoying to have to report several scam/spam messages a day but I do it. If I didn't I'd probably be getting 20-30 a day instead of 2-3.

[Thermodyne]

If you want to have a little fun, just copy the code from my sig and post it on a web page. then send them a reply with an attachment that is scripted to open the page.

[Xrati]

Thermodyne, that's a great idea, but you are not going to scare people of this mentality. They're to stupid to realize what you are trying to do to them! I like Baron's idea better. I do have a problem with Yahoo based spam and right now I'm getting 8 to 15 e-mails a day! I still like my original idea, virus them to death.

[Iron Giant]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php...03-03-28&res=l

[Xrati]

Well if anybody does write one of these programs, please let me know! I'll be happy to Beta Test it for you. I'm sure there are others who would love to help out such a noble cause.

[General Woundwort]

I resurrect this thread from the depths to post this link to a story on the inside workings of the Nigerian scams...

I Will Eat Your Dollars