Why don't sites like eBay block Nigeria?

re: eBay really needs to get their act together - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board

Match.com used to be plagued with Russian bride spam. After a year-long infestation of “I am Svetlana and I admire you structure” email messages pissed off their membership and threatened their reputation, Match hit upon a brilliant solution - block Russia and Eastern Europe. Duh! Anyhow, most of the spam went away immediately (snaps fingers).

Why doesn’t eBay just block access from Nigeria and satellite ISPs that serve Nigerian cybercafes? In the thread linked above, someone answered:

However, there must be some common IPs that the Nigerian scammers use. On my Web site, there are few Nigerian spammers that originate from Nigerian IPs; most have Israeli IPs, because several satellite ISPs from that country provide service to cybercafes in Nigeria.

I’m also curious: does Nigerian scamming benefit eBay in some way?

I remember reading somewhere that there was a big bust in the Netherlands.

Nigeria is still a large country with a population of 140 million people, not all of which are spammers of scammers. Blocking the entire nation would deprive eBay of a sizable market (admittedly not the most important of eBay’s markets, but why should they not serve it?) and piss of Nigerians and people who might think it’s not appropriate to discriminate against an entire nation just because of a few rotten apples in the basket.

Few rotten apples? From everything that I’ve read, corruption is the norm in Nigerian society and the Nigerian government.

But this doesn’t mean that every Nigerian user who’s buying or selling thins on eBay or similar sites is a corrupt spammer or scammer.

Probably. Time before they switch to another IP once you block the first one: 30 minutes, maybe an hour.

I actually was in Nigeria for two weeks, back in the mid-90s, and I can certainly attest from personal experience that corruption is rife. Coming into the country, immigration, customs, everyone had their hand out and was offering to make the process difficult for us if we didn’t provide dash (i.e., small bribes or “tips.”) We had been warned not to give in, and that made life kinda interesting.

On the other hand, we met many lovely people, as educated and intelligent as anywhere, and perfectly honest. (In fact, the reason we were there was that our clients were losing employees and were afraid it was because they paid everything open and honest, and their competitors lured people away with under-the-table non-reported cash.)

The scammers know that Nigeria has a reputation for corruption and so play on that. An email from someone in Switzerland or Denmark offering to slip you a few million for cooperating with their scam, well, that wouldn’t be so credible. So, blocking “Nigeria” wouldn’t actually stop the scammers and would be very irritating to a large, innocent, population.

To support Dex’s last point, the last half dozen Nigerian scams I received were from Hong Kong, Netherlands, and the UK. Even when the printed address is some place in Lagos or Abuja, the e-mail came out of other countries.

Life must be really tough for a Nigerian General who really does need someone to help him get a few million bucks out of the country.

I’d seriously wonder if honest Nigerians can buy or sell anything on eBay - I’ve never seen one try, but I would think they’re going to have a lot of hassle with nearly every transaction. People will be very reluctant to deal with them anyway, just because of their nationality.

If I may inquire without being nosy; just what sort of scam were you running at that time?

:stuck_out_tongue: