I have a rather simple and serious question: We are all familiar with spam. Does it ever work, ie does anyone ever fall for it? I’d have to say yes, since spam’s continued existence is proof that it works at least occasionally, or people wouldn’t do it. On the other hand, having read through some of the more common spam I see these days, I doubt that anyone can be THAT stupid.
Let’s see. Here’s one I got:
OK, so these people want us to believe that they’ve found a revolutionary weight-loss program, featured on NBC, CBS and CNN (the Oprah part doesn’t exactly add to their credibility), and they’re marketing it through spam? Who could possibly ever fall for this?
The beginning of another one:
Sure, why name the news program? It’s perfectly enough to just say that it’s major. Also, these people are sitting on an amazing moneymaking scheme… and they share it? Via spam? Come on.
Not to mention the freaking Nigeria spam. You know the one. Someone named Abacha or one of her virtual lawyers wants to give you, a random from nowhere, 30% (or 10% or 25% or 50%) of 30 million (or 100 million, or 50 million) in exchange for absolutely nothing. The astounding volume of this spam tells me that it works, but who is such a SCREAMING FREAKING IDIOT that they fall for it?
Oh, and how does the Nigeria spam work anyway? Do they ask for a “small down payment” before they deposit the money, or what? What’s in it for the spammers? Just asking.
This got pretty long for a first post. Anyway, my central question should be clear. Who is so unbelievably stupid that MY mailbox keeps filling up with spam?
After yet another “Pick up your free airline tickets!” spam, I very nearly replied to it: “Hey, does my address say I’m an AOL user?”
[sub]No offence to AOL dopers. It’s just that AOL is often perceived as a “beginner’s” service provider. Most of the chain-mail I get is from people I know who are on AOL, and the believe just about everything they receive.[/sub]
To answer the OP; yes, there are many people who fall for these things. Even the Nigeria scam.
Thanks Fear Itself, that was exactly what I was looking for. So there really are people so boundlessly idiotic that they fall for this stuff. Not just fall for it, but steal $335000 to invest in it. Two questions immediately spring to mind.
Is evolution going backwards? If not, how are people like this created and why do they survive?
I’ve long since lost track of the number of Nigeria scams I’ve seen. How come the people who fall for it don’t see another one (hopefully realizing that it’s a con) before they’re done transferring the money?
Is there an e-mail to which the scams may be forwarded? It would be nice if there were some way of shutting these down by prosecuting the perpetrators.
Frequently, the really evil spammres are nothng more than a P.O. Box and an easily abandoned little office, if that. It’s hard to track them down and it would be really difficult cost-and-effect wise to manage the resources for doing so. Many of them alos operate (or relay their spam through) countries that in no way have the resources to go and chase them down.
Nonetheless, once and awhile the cops do go after the very worst of the offenders and sometimes they hit paydirt. The bigger and more successful te scam, the more likely it will be that you’ll get caught. So far big arrests in Internet scams have been in the U.S. and China where they have fraud devisions that are more apt to catch the @#%^&@ spammers.
And yes, if you do a Google search on 419 scams, eventually you’ll find a government site where you can forward the e-mails if you are so inclined. I think it’s an FBI site, but I don’t remember.
FWIW, my old boss almost got caught up in that until I figured out what he was doing.
I was also discussing this with our corporate lawyer and he said that the laws in Nigeria are so lax, (to almost non-existant) that there isn’t really anything they can do. This thing has been going on for almost 20 years, IIRC.
There was a show on the 419 scams on the Discovery channel a couple of nights ago. They made the claim that the people this particular show was about had hauled in $12,000,000. The average loss was $200,000.
It’s amazing that anyone could fall for something as stupis as this.
I know someone who actually fell for the Nigerian scam. He was fiftyish and had a first-class honours degree from Cambridge. He also had had ms for about 30 years, not a severe case, but he was somewhat debilitated and my daughter-in-law, who is a physician, tells me that it can affect judgment. At any rate, he sent something $150,000 to Nigeria (this has been going on since around 1990 and originately came by snail mail) and has even visited there. He lost his wife, his house and much of his retirement. He still believes he will strike it rich. His ex has acquired power-of-attorney over his finances. They still live together, the divorce being only pro-forma so she can avoid his debts. So yes, they do pay off occasionally. Still with hundreds of Nigerians and others mining this rather thin vein, it is hard to see how it could even pay for the cost of buying the list of targets. I probably get a few dozen a week. I wish there were some infalliable way of filtering them, the way all messages with !! or $$ or breast or penis get sent to /dev/null unread.
Remember that spammers aren’t just emailing 40 or 50 people a day hoping that 5 or 10 of them will bite. They’re emailing 100,000 people a day hoping that 5 or 10 of them will bite.
The spammers (list sellers and the folks who actually send it) claim rates on the order of 2 per 1000 or so. I don’t buy it* for the most part. I think they inflate the response rate in order to sucker people into buying their lists, etc. Surprisingly, a large number of people believe what unethical people tell them.
*For non-porn spam. Porno spam is highly effective. Oh well.