And still it keeps happening

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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:02 am

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10731367

I swear you could put flaming letters 200 foot high in the sky, saying "It's a SCAM!" and people still wouldn't believe you

:banghead:

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:26 am

Are you sure???

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:32 am

^^ Don't get me started, you remember what happened last time Shocked

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:56 am

The only effective way how to fight scam is educating population.
Sadly, nobody ever told me how to spot internet scam, save for this community.

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 5:29 am

We're starting to fight back Mortal

http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=203997

Let me know when you're back over this way, but only if you like beach fishing and drinking beer Wink

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:20 am

^^ Luckily enough, I like both, but I'm a bit scared touching PF's anything Very Happy

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 7:09 am

Maybe the lady was an immigrant from a non English speaking country, so she had more problems to spot the obvious.

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:31 am

^^ Immigrant or not, people should learn that nobody gives anything for free

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:05 am

^^^^^^^^
I give smiles and hugs for free.

I honestly think, it's exacerbated by the gloominess of the world, sometimes people just want to believe. I haven't found a job in over a year, my money is wearing dangerously thin and so is my morale, now I won't fall for a scam (because hopefully I know better by now), but I do catch myself daydreaming at times about something miraculous.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 1440

Quote:

Sadly, nobody ever told me how to spot internet scam

Me either. I never touched a computer until 2001 and had never heard of internet scams. When I got my first one, I took note of the fact that someone who didn't know my email address or name and called me "Beloved" wanted to give me a lot of money so kind of figured it might not be genuine.

There is no free lunch.

Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 3:32 am

People have been scamming each other for as long as people have had interactions.

There are so many ways to scam someone. There is a phrase caveat emptor which kind of means buyer beware.

We all can be vulnerable to scams. Desperation, loneliness, stress, "love", desire to help others (philanthropy), magical thinking and a desire to get ahead by taking advantage of a perceived good deal.

I hope we don't move into blaming the victims.

Education is good. There are so many variations of scams (see ScamWarners) it is hard to educate about each one of them. Then there is phishing and begging and bad business practices where people get taken advantage of every day.

Scammers suck. Evil or Very Mad

Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 9:05 am

I have to agree with ParaNoid above.

As soon as the first gold coin was invented in Egypt (or Greece, or maybe Buffalo, I'm not sure), someone in the room said "there's gotta be a way I can get more of these, and I don't mean by working". And thus the first lad was born. It's been going on since then, and the internet is just another way to do the same things that have been done a million times before.

The first 419 I ever encountered was received by fax, and it was largely the same idea: Congratulations, shitload of money for free, just send WU transfer. If I recall correctly, it was even done in capitals.

As long as there are people to buy their stories, scammers will exist. Since we can't kill all the scammers, the only hope is to educate their would-be victims. And it's hard to convince some people.

I'm pretty sure that caveat emptor means "the cave is empty" though.

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