I get a whole bunch of Nigerian email scam emails a day, and they all have something in common, among other things: They all ask you to respond to a different email address than the one they originally emailed you from. Any reason why they do this? Tracking purposes?
Adam
Simple. They never sent it from the email address that appears in the ‘from’ field. There’s no verification whatsoever that what somebody claims to be their originating address is real. This dates from the time when the only people sending emails were a few computer geeks, and the idea of transnational identity fraud via email would have seemed (perhaps) laughable.
More than once, when the address they’ve requested the reply to has been an easily-identifiable one, I’ve forwarded it to abuse@xyz.com, and once I received a reply from them, thanking me for the help.
This Nigerian scam has been going on a couple of years now. Haven’t any of the perpetrators been caught yet?
Google ‘419 convictions’ and you’ll find plenty. But there’s many more out there. (419 refers to the Nigerian penal code for the crime in question)
It’s news to me the people involved in this actually are Nigerians! I mean, anybody can send an e-mail and pretend to be from any country.
You can have some fun with these. Check out:
Also check out http://www.419eater.com/
(And yes, the whole thing does have its origins in Nigerian organised crime. Although that’s no longer its sole preserve.)
I think you will find that one of the primary reasons is that the email addy from which these emails are sent is shut down by Hotmail (or whoever) very rapidly, so the scammers need another (working) email address to receive replies.