Ever since the internet landed in our lives, the idea that getting rich is easy has been floating around every corner that can catch our attention. Email is the main venue, and the e-mail message is the primary medium. The stars of this show are the Nigerian scams — also known as 419 scams — which promise us money and profit in exchange for a procedure that typically involves sending small amounts of money in advance. Knowing full well that these scams are not necessarily from Nigeria, one researcher asked: Why do they say they are from Nigeria? The answer revealed a very well-thought-out strategy.
One of those privileged places where invitations bloom is our email inbox, where very strange sender names — foreigners, for example — offer us the fast track to money, incredible trips, dream businesses, and pills that lift the... morale. Everything, all the time. Those emails that feed and shape your spam folder are the basis from which thousands of scams and robberies are perpetrated, though they happen less frequently than a paranoid society imagines.
https://old.neoteo.com/prediccion-perfecta-una-estafa-estadistica/Looking for the common factor in the origins of these messages, in 2012 researcher Cormac Herley noticed that many of these emails with scam intentions had headers like: 'We need help for operations for sick children / ecological plantations / multi-purpose charity or investment in newly discovered oil wells in... Nigeria.'
Do you recognize them? This type of scam has a name: Nigerian Scams (Nigerian scams) or also 419 scams, after the Nigerian penal code for fraud. In any case, the formal name at international law level is 'advanced fee fraud', referring to the heaviest scams that promise you money in hundreds of ways, as long as you send some shipping costs in advance.
These scams, which seem designed only for the most distracted and ambitious internet users, are more effective than commonly believed, though less massive than feared. But taking into account the name and what they say in the emails, the mathematician Cormac Herley asked: Why do those who run Nigerian scams say they are from Nigeria? An irrelevant question? Don't be so sure.
Why insist on Nigeria as the email's origin?
If almost everyone already knows that emails coming with those claims from Nigeria are potential scams, why insist on keeping Nigeria as the country in conflict and the origin of the email? According to the mathematician, scammers are not necessarily interested in appearing credible; they are simply looking for the most gullible victims they can find to maximize the return on their effort. In other words, they target those who are not part of the almost everyone.
How? Easy. If someone has enough information and knowledge to discern that an email from Nigeria is a potential scam, that person is no longer useful as a victim for a scam with another country or another deception model. That is, scammers understand that it is better that all those who are not scammable know that it is a scam, so they don't waste time and avoid being discovered in any consequent action.
Their potential target ends up being a very small part of the internet population, but that is what justifies the costs of their actions. Very intelligent strategy, no doubt. Cormac Herley conducted an exhaustive study, with all the necessary formulas to understand the mathematics behind his claim. You can read it yourself by clicking here, to draw your own conclusions. What did you think?
