HOW TO DETECT INTERNET SCAMS
HOW TO DETECT INTERNET SCAMS
Imagine checking your e-mail to find out if your friends, colleagues, business associates or any other person or organization that communicates with you, has gotten in touch. Your eyes ritualistically scan the name/subject in each box, and hey! a message in one of the subject lines gets your attention. Curiosity gets the better part of you and naturally you click on the subject matter and the contents are revealed. Well what do you know ? someone is presenting a whooping sum of money to you, in exchange for a “seemingly harmless favour”. It’s an unbelievable offer, probably a once in a life time opportunity and you decide to play ball, and end up parting with some money. Congrats! you’ve just been duped of your hard earned money by some cyber criminals in sheep clothing.
A person who falls as a victim in the net of these day light robbers is referred to as a “Mugu” or “Maga”, which simply means “a dummy, a fool” and in our National colloquial (vernacular) in Nigeria is called “Mumu”. The reason why people constantly swallow the bait is ironically based on “Greed ”. These lazy bones will always present you with a whooping sum that would make you whistle or cause your eyes to pop out of its sockets. Of course, since you want the money, you agree to play ball. They use the weapon of greed against you, tell you to bring a small amount of money, a little now, and a little again based on a thousand and one excuses. It’s like leaving trails of bread crumbs for the bird to eat, which it does eat, hoping excitedly from one to the other, and since its guard has been let down…. bam !, it finds itself trapped in a cage.
I have received e-mails telling me of a next of kin issue with millions that I could conveniently inherit, or that I’d won a whooping sum,(in pounds) organised by some Blue chip companies, lottery bodies. I was asked to send my personal details ( name, address, phone number, bank account number,) to claim my prize money. I didn’t need any one to tell me that they were scammed mails, I sniffed it out instantly.
Those who perpetuate these crimes are referred to as “Yahoo Yahoo boys” in Nigeria (they illegally used the top notch site for criminal activities when the internet began to blossom in the country) , and also “Advanced fee fraudsters”.
HOW TO SNIFF THEM OUT
Always bear in mind that the potential scammer might and might not know you. He might know you by reason of being your friend, relative, colleague who knows a lot about you such as your likes and dislikes, where you shop, your habits, what you do, they know a lot. Where they don’t know you, they generate e-mails through the e-mail look up process on popular search engines and type in a person’s name. Thousands of e- mails with the name pops up, then the search is narrowed down to city, town, address of the people. They then decide on whom to pick, and after carefully writing the letter to avoid suspicion, it’s sent to your box, and then the game begins.
Death and Inheritance messages: Next of kin
The scammer introduces himself in the e-mail as “Mr X”, (a false name) and probably tells you he’d tried mailing a letter (surface mail) to you, sent it but didn’t get any response and so it must have been lost. He correctly states your name, address, and can even tell you some details about yourself (but not in all cases, he can go straight to the point after introducing himself). There are various versions of the next of kin story. One version is to inform you of how a rich man died (with his family) and left an incredible sum with no one to inherit the money. Then he began to conduct an investigation and suddenly finds out that you’re his lost long next of kin. Of course he knows you’ll doubt it and asks you in the letter to send an e-mail to his Attorney to verify. You’re curious (on one hand you feel something’s not right and on the other you begin to think of the possibility of being a made for life and even allow yourself to day dream in Fantasy Island). You send the e-mail, after all an Attorney (an officer of the law in the Temple of Justice) can’t be engaged in nefarious activities.
The Attorney who unknown to you is still ‘Mr X’ replies and confirms its true, and with that assurance you eagerly write back to ‘Mr X’ telling him you’ve confirmed and your ready to claim the inheritance. He’s happy, showers praises on you and tells you he’ll get right to working on it. He waits a couple of more days (to heighten the suspense) and sends another e- mail to you stating that he’ll need , say 0, to get the legal documents out based on “xyz reasons”. What’s 0 compared to hundreds of