As explained here, the “419 scam,” also known as the “Nigerian scam” has been around since the 80’s and is one of the most sent types of spam in existence.
The scam gets its name from the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code that deals with fraud. The emails, most of which claim to come from people in one of the African nations (some also claim to be from people located in South America, Central America, or Europe), contain a variation of the same basic story involving a bank account containing millions of dollars.
Last week I've received a new kind of inovation: not even in my junk box, directly in my inbox, sent by the New-York Times itself!
The scammer sent an article with his own private message. Too bad to use intelligence in the service of dishonesty.
I don't know yet what NYT should do to avoid this, and I hope it's only an isolated initiative and not a growing strategy.
Whatever, don't be naive, don't be fooled by scammers, report them, and if you feel strong enough, scambait them as The Ebola Monkey Man :-)
What is scambaiting? Well, put simply, you enter into a dialogue with scammers, simply to waste their time and resources. Whilst you are doing this, you will be helping to keep the scammers away from real potential victims and screwing around with the minds of deserving thieves.
You can find help on 419eater and even partners on twitter ...
Note à destination des francophones : L'équivalent français existe auprès des Croque-escrocs, moins actifs que leurs cousins anglophones.
Pour plus d'information en français, c'est par ici.
