(no subject)
Nov. 18th, 2003 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberI feel bad posting silliness after Lizbeth's been posting so much importatnt stuff lately, but I just had to share this. Slashdot recently had a link to a highly amusing article in The Guardian. You've all probably heard about these emails that go around claiming to be from a relative of a deposed African leader? Well, there are a number of sites popping up (this one, for example) dedicated to responding to these scams and toying with the scammers. I was only mildy amused by the idea until I read the following quote:
</schadenfreude>
EDIT: ...you know, after reading some of the back-and-forths on that website, I find myself really, really, really hoping that there are no legitimate charities in Nigeria that try to do work in this manner. I actually found myself feeling sorry for the spammers. The particular exchange I just read was from someone who claimed to be representing a church raising funds to build housing for widows. Now, I can imagine the word spreading in a poor country like Nigeria that there's money to be made by emailing people in wealthier countries, even to people who aren't scammers. What if a real, legitimate charity started doing this and ended up getting led on and manipulated into sending in silly pictures of themselves (plus never getting the donation that they thought they would get)?
Then again, of course, if this really is a scam trying to use a charitable cause to take advantage of people's sympathy then they deserve all that and then some, but how do you know?
*sigh*
Nevermind, I guess it's not that funny anyway.. I think... maybe.
EDIT^2: Yes, yes. I know that it almost certainly is a scam and that even if it's not, they're foolish to try this method instead of working through existing international charities. For some reason the 'what-if' factor is just really bothering me. I wouldn't be so upset if this particular one were just another obvious scheme to do a bank transfer or whatever, but this one is representing what would normally be a legitimate, donation-worthy cause. More than anything else, this whole thing is making me more and more pissed at these scammers who are salting the ground for legitimate charities.
EDIT^3: I think I might be overthinking this a wee bit.
"Mike [the 419eater.com guy] replies in the names of made-up characters. His sites specialises in collecting pictures of the scammers in order to make it more difficult to find new victims. Using the pretext that in order to believe they are real people they need to take a photograph holding up signs with the name of Mike's character, he has succeeded in getting one fraudster to pose with a piece of paper stating: MI Semem Stains. Other sites feature similar pictures with signs reading 'Iama Dildo', 'Mr Bukakke' and 'Ben Dover'."
</schadenfreude>
EDIT: ...you know, after reading some of the back-and-forths on that website, I find myself really, really, really hoping that there are no legitimate charities in Nigeria that try to do work in this manner. I actually found myself feeling sorry for the spammers. The particular exchange I just read was from someone who claimed to be representing a church raising funds to build housing for widows. Now, I can imagine the word spreading in a poor country like Nigeria that there's money to be made by emailing people in wealthier countries, even to people who aren't scammers. What if a real, legitimate charity started doing this and ended up getting led on and manipulated into sending in silly pictures of themselves (plus never getting the donation that they thought they would get)?
Then again, of course, if this really is a scam trying to use a charitable cause to take advantage of people's sympathy then they deserve all that and then some, but how do you know?
*sigh*
Nevermind, I guess it's not that funny anyway.. I think... maybe.
EDIT^2: Yes, yes. I know that it almost certainly is a scam and that even if it's not, they're foolish to try this method instead of working through existing international charities. For some reason the 'what-if' factor is just really bothering me. I wouldn't be so upset if this particular one were just another obvious scheme to do a bank transfer or whatever, but this one is representing what would normally be a legitimate, donation-worthy cause. More than anything else, this whole thing is making me more and more pissed at these scammers who are salting the ground for legitimate charities.
EDIT^3: I think I might be overthinking this a wee bit.
