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Spam Your Rights Online

419ers Diversify Into Assassination Threats? 529

Posted by simoniker from the nice dept.
Richardsonke1 writes "Just when you thought 419ers couldn't get any worse, now they are sending death threats, according to a story at The Register. The emails require you to 'produce a mandatory sum of US$40,000.00 {FOURTHY THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS} only,into our account given below in nigeria within ninety six hours{96},alternatively you will be SNIPPED and GUNNED down during the period of our oncoming anniversary of fifty years.' All joking of 'snipping' aside, for those people who fall for regular 419 emails, this would terrify many gullible web users."
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419ers Diversify Into Assassination Threats? More

419ers Diversify Into Assassination Threats?

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  • Stephen King dead today... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rarose ( 36450 ) <rob.robamy@com> on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:55PM (#9739583)
    ...after failing to pay Nigerian hitman.

  • YRO? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:56PM (#9739587)
    Since when are assassination threats considered part of My Rights Online?

    • Re:YRO? (Score:5, Funny)

      by TedCheshireAcad ( 311748 ) <ted@fUMLAUTc.rit.edu minus punct> on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:12PM (#9739750) Homepage
      Since when are assassination threats considered part of My Rights Online?

      Your right to be online is dependent first on your right to live. When your right to live is revoked, indirectly, your right to be online is too. Q.E.D.

    • Re:YRO? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Richardsonke1 ( 612224 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:20PM (#9739808)
      Don't ask me. I submitted the story and set it as "index" (the default) and for some reason the editor put it under your rights online.

    • Re:YRO? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Our Man In Redmond ( 63094 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @04:09PM (#9740753)
      Since when are assassination threats considered part of My Rights Online?

      Maybe we're moving toward the world of H. Beam Piper's Lone Star Planet, where gunning down legislators was declared a legitimate expression of one's right to political speech.

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by blurfus ( 606535 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:58PM (#9739603) Journal
    I don't think I could afford FOURTHY thousand dollars (American or otherwise) ;)

  • what about the real death threats (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:59PM (#9739611)
    Great!

    Now I have to read even more spam in order to filter out the fake death threats from the real ones!

    What happens if I mark a real death threat from my arch-nemesis as spam? I won't be ready to protect myself.

  • The Scary Thing is... (Score:4, Funny)

    by trippinonbsd ( 689462 ) <samchill @ g m a i l.com> on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:59PM (#9739615) Homepage
    I know more than a few people who would absolutely go nuts if they got this email. Oh and obligatory joke...
    1) Send Death Threat Emails
    2) Watch Money Roll In
    3) Profit!

    You dont even need the question marks.

    • Not Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)

      by blunte ( 183182 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:10PM (#9740197)
      I'll bet a mere $10,000 would pay for a PI+hitman to take out the person threatening you. That's a huge savings, and it could be considered self defense.

      So the list works more like this:

      1) Send Death Threat Emails
      2) ???
      3) Die Die Die

      • Re:Not Exactly (Score:5, Funny)

        by Idarubicin ( 579475 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @04:36PM (#9741001) Journal
        I don't know the source of the quotation, but I once heard it said,

        "Never try to extort more than it would cost to have you killed."

      • That's a huge savings, and it could be considered self defense

        It would be self-defense if a guy was sneaking around your bushes with a sniper rifle, not if he'd merely made threats. In order for deadly force to be justifiable as self-defense, there has to be a clear and immediate danger.

        If you took out a contract on the person it would be first degree murder. Maybe the judge would see mitigating circumstances and give you life without parole instead of sending you to the electric chair.

  • Can I get a "do-not-assassinate" cert? (Score:5, Funny)

    by SmoothriderSean ( 657482 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:00PM (#9739625) Homepage
    They're going about this all wrong. Personally, I'd pay 5 or 10 bucks to have a certificate mailed to me from Nigeria certifying that I have indeed paid my way out of being "snipped".

  • Blah (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:01PM (#9739628)
    Write back and ask if they take paypal.

  • could be a good development (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nanojath ( 265940 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:02PM (#9739635) Homepage Journal
    If major governments can be convinced these are "terroristic threats" we might actually get some police action against these annoying criminals.

    • What happens.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by i8a4re ( 594587 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:34PM (#9739921)
      when they send this e-mail to a Federal Agent, Judge, etc. personal e-mail address? Making a death threat on any of these persons is a felony and the US could seek extradition. Or mayby W. would consider this a terrorist threat and deliver a $40,000 piece of ordinance via the U.S. Air Force.

      • better yet (Score:5, Funny)

        by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:37PM (#9739952)
        reply back and forge your header to potus@whitehouse.gov and ask him to repeat his message
      • An extradition treaty..with Nigeria? Somehow I think not.

      • Re:What happens.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:17PM (#9740258)
        Making a death threat on ANYBODY is illegal, not just a judge or agent. If you get e-mails like this, print them out, headers and all, and contact your local law enforcement until they get pissed off enough to deal with it.

        This is great. This is something the police know how to deal with - death threats. This isn't some dodgy dumb scam now, this is something they can beat someone up over, and they like that.
      • Making a death threat on any of these persons is a felony

        As opposed to making death threats against everyone else (and across state/ country lines, no less), which is perfectly legal?

      • Prague (Score:3, Interesting)

        by pommiekiwifruit ( 570416 )
        Sorta like that Czech guy who walked into the Nigerian embassy in Prague and shot some random nigerians, because he was sick of the spam? Ouch.

      • Re:What happens.... (Score:5, Funny)

        by wintermute740 ( 450084 ) <wintermute@@@nitemarecafe...com> on Monday July 19, 2004 @04:30PM (#9740943) Homepage
        "when they send this e-mail to a Federal Agent, Judge, etc. personal e-mail address? Making a death threat on any of these persons is a felony and the US could seek extradition. Or mayby W. would consider this a terrorist threat and deliver a $40,000 piece of ordinance via the U.S. Air Force."

        Now why would the 419ers need a toilet seat?!

    • Re:could be a good development (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:36PM (#9739937) Homepage Journal

      If major governments can be convinced these are "terroristic threats" we might actually get some police action against these annoying criminals.

      OTOH, with millions of spam-related "terrorist threats", they will dilute the focus of the authorities assigned to investigate the real thing.

      This is almost as bad as the dilution in the term "terrorist", which gets applied overly broadly by government officials trying to garner support for ventures and programs that would not otherwise have any such deep and broad support.

      It's like omnibus legislation, but in the lexicon.

      Maybe this will work: 9/11 - herbal viagara - 9/11 - herbal viagara ....

      Have we got an associative image yet that will help me sell herbal viagara, or are you just getting subconsciously anxious about terrorist blowing up your private parts?

    • Is the bank account real? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:39PM (#9739962) Journal
      If the bank account's real, it's traceable. Sounds like a good opportunity to get the Fedz involved, deposit a dollar, and see where it goes.

      Of course, that assumes that you're not planning to actually _go_ to Nigeria any time soon. The 419ers do sometimes kidnap and kill suckers who've gone there hunting for their money.

    • Oh wow, good call. (Score:4, Informative)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <SatanicpuppyNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:42PM (#9739990) Journal
      I don't think they'd have to be convinced, I think it actually falls into the law, at least here in the US:

      According to Blacks (Law dictionary):

      A person is guilty of a felony if he threatens to commit any crime of violence with purpose to terrorize another or to cause evacuation of a building, place of assembly, or facility of public transportation, or otherwise to cause serious public inconvenience, or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience. 18 U.S.C.A. 3077; Model Penal Code, 211.3.

      Sounds pretty clear cut. And this is one place where Bush's obsession with invading countries could actually work to our advantage.

      • Re:Oh wow, good call. (Score:5, Informative)

        by mattjb0010 ( 724744 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:19PM (#9740286) Homepage
        Section 323 of the Nigerian penal code:
        Any person who, knowing the contents thereof, directly or indirectly causes any person to receive any writing threatening to kill any person is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for seven years.

        So no we're going to have start calling them 323s.

  • Well then... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:02PM (#9739641)
    Guess we have all the proof and reason we need to invade Nigeria now.

  • uhhhh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Klar ( 522420 ) <curchin@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:02PM (#9739643) Homepage Journal
    That was a scam?!?!

  • FBI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by herrvinny ( 698679 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:03PM (#9739645)
    At least this should bring in the FBI. Death threats crossing state lines has to qualify as an FBI/Justice Department investigation. Perhaps even the State Department if the email was really sent from a Nigerian server.

    • Re:FBI (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:11PM (#9739735)
      At least this should bring in the FBI. Death threats crossing state lines has to qualify as an FBI/Justice Department investigation.

      Interstate fraud should involve the FBI as well, but they don't fully investigate 419 cases now. Until someone is gunned down, I expect the FBI will (probably unofficially) tell anyone that reports the emails to ignore them, despite the clearly illegal content.

    • I would like to think so... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rev.LoveJoy ( 136856 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:53PM (#9740569) Homepage Journal
      Some years ago, my then fiancee had been receiving death threats via email from a long time stalker. Even though the stalker was not technically savvy and left tracks all over his yahoo.com mailing, the FBI was not interested in purusing antying.

      The Portland, OR field office told me, "Work it out with your local authorities, if they cannot help you, contact us." Now, keep in mind that I did my homework before calling the field office. Yahoo.com was even good enough to provide a free phone call from their legal council (kudos yahoo!) to explain to me *exactly* what I needed to do such that they could assist the authorities in a full investigation.

      To make a long retort simply longer, the local yokels didn't know what to do. We got no joy with them because basically, the stalker had never shown up and brandished a weapon, or somehow vandalized property in a way we could proove or shot her dead on the doorstep.

      We ended up getting results by simply *daily* badgering the detective who took the case. I walked him through everything from "how email works for dummies" to speaking with the DA to subpeona Yahoo.com for their mail records.

      The whole ordeal took several months and the FBI's part in the entire deal (even though, as you correctly point out, these were serious threats of bodliy harm across state lines) was a fart in a hurricane. I would like to be able to give them props, but without a corpse, they apparently did not feel motivated.

      Cheers,
      -- RLJ

      PS - serious note: I am amazed how many people I have related this story too who either know somebody in a similar situation or have been in this situation. Fixing this problem in my lady's life is one of the most positive things we have done to date. If you have questions how it worked or how to go about this, email me, I will respond - greg.crowe@gmail.com

    • Re:FBI (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ReelOddeeo ( 115880 )
      At least this should bring in the FBI. Death threats crossing state lines has to qualify as an FBI/Justice Department investigation. Perhaps even the State Department if the email was really sent from a Nigerian server.


      I think you have some serious and fundamental misunderstandings of the various departments and their functions.

      The CIA: these are the spys. They gather information on terrorist threats outside of the country. Examples would include things outside our borders that threaten the profits

  • Maybe they've gone to far... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by venicebeach ( 702856 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:03PM (#9739646) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps now that the scammers have crossed this line they will get the attention of law enforcement. Sending a death threat is illegal, is it not? I realize that scamming people out of money is also illegal, but in this case it seems like the initial email is already crossing the line...

    • Re:Maybe they've gone to far... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:54PM (#9740082)
      The United States Secret Service has been dealing with 419 scams in the US for years, and they even have a page dedicated to it.

      http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.shtml

    • Illegal *where*? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:06PM (#9740170) Journal
      If these scammers are really in Nigeria, then what matters most legally is whether Nigerian law counts emailing a death threat to some foreigner to be a violation of Nigerian law. What matters most in practice is whether you get caught, which depends on whether some police official there feels motivated to do the work to catch you. Under several recent Nigerian administrations, this is closely related to the probability that you've successfully scammed enough money from suckers to be worth hitting up for a piece of the action.

      US law and US Executive Branch practice are hypocritical and schizophrenic. The US doesn't have any jurisdiction outside the US, and the Executive Branch has the policy that US laws don't apply to US government officials outside the US, but they might or might not apply to citizens, and if you do something overseas they don't like, they can kidnap you and haul you in, or confiscate your boat in the "war on drugs" or whatever.

      The chances of getting realistic proactive police support from the US Feds are relatively low, but if you did actually lose money, it's possible that they'll help track down the bank, but they'll probably hit a dead end quickly. The more useful support would be something like telling their embassy that we're more pissed off about death threats than the usual scams against greedy people, or freezing US assets of Nigerian banks that don't cooperate in tracking down the miscreants, but I'm not optimistic.

  • Choices (Score:4, Funny)

    by bluelip ( 123578 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:03PM (#9739651) Homepage Journal
    I think I'd rather be sniped than snipped. OUCH!!!
    • I have to agree with you there. I mean, really...there's always another autographed special-edition James T. Kirk toupee on eBay within an hour or so of me getting sniped out of the last one, so what's the problem?

      Now, snipping, on the other hand, detracts from the value of said toupee...

      Wait, I've said too much. Don't snipe my stuff, you commie bastards!

  • Crossing the Line (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:04PM (#9739667) Homepage Journal
    This is a death threat. The State Dept. of the countries involved have a responsibility to protect its citizens. No matter how inept the method might be the threat stands and needs to be addressed.

  • Snipped... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mdvlspwn99 ( 172473 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:05PM (#9739680) Journal
    New weapon for Counterstrike, large shears! Prepare to be snipped!

  • Offended...??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Core-Dump ( 148342 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:05PM (#9739681)
    Note : - Your death has been paid for by someone you offended sometime

    Bloody ex-wives.. i knew they were up to no good..

  • 419 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by QEDog ( 610238 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:07PM (#9739693)
    It is getting more and more difficult for 419spammers to make money. Why? Because of the many people that are responding to them just to make fun of them (as reported many times before in /.). I've done it, and collected some funny pictures too, and then moved on. Some of my friends are still in the hobby of making fun of them, and they tell me it is getting increasingly harder to get any pictures from them.

    It seems to me that the traffic of people making fun of them (baiters) is very high compared to the dumb people falling for the scam.

    In fact, I've been following my friend's baits, and the scammers seem desperate, unwilling to cooperate if you ask for a picture of them or any other information. Contrast this with many months ago where they would take any pictures that you asked them.

    Since most of the baiters play along with the scammers story to ridiculize them, the scammers are getting desperate and started to use this new scheme. It is hard to play along with a death threat, compared to, a petition of money for a church in nigeria.

  • No Problem...I'll be Glad to Pay (Score:5, Funny)

    by Schlemphfer ( 556732 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:07PM (#9739700) Homepage
    I'm more than willing to hand over my 30% share of the 27 million dollars left by Sani Abacha, the late Nigerian dictator, if they call off assassinating me.

    • Send Mariam Abacha these guys' bank account number (Score:4, Insightful)

      by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:21PM (#9740308) Journal
      Many of the old-fashioned 419 scammers want you to send them your bank account number so they can suck money out of it. These scammers give you a bank account number in Nigeria. It should be easy to glue the two together, such as by telling Mariam Abacha that you've got a bank account in Nigeria because your late uncle Fred was an engineer in the oil drilling business and he left it to you in care of Barrister Charles I Allen or Secretary Togowalla.

      Plus you can send the assassins mail saying "My name is Laurent Kabila. You killed my Father. Prepare to die!" from whatever address the regular 419ers are using.

  • insanity. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by randyest ( 589159 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:09PM (#9739715) Homepage
    Note : - Your death has been paid for by someone you offended sometime ago and it will be adviceable that you co-operate with us a.s.a.p.

    TOWOGBOLA .A.JOHNSON SECRETARY.

    Oh please. "Someone" from "sometime" ago. $40k to not kill me. Riight. I guess, as the article mentions, this might be a little scary if it's, say, you're first email ever. But c'mon -- some anonymous hotmail account which has never been linked to me gets such a threat, and I'm supposed to worry enough to send $40k to a stranger? They'd need to include at least some personal info (name, address, car make/model/color, what I'm wearing and doing right now, etc.) to make it scary.

    I don't see how this can work as well as the "traditional" greed-exploiting 419 scam.

    And, assuming the bank account info is legit, seems like the authorities could put the smack down on this silliness pretty quickly.

  • So when a mail like this hits Bush's email account (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:09PM (#9739720)
    So when a mail like this hits Bush's email account (taking in mind Dubya knows how to operate 'that Internet thing') , that would be a threat to him.
    Would that finally let some agency take some serious actions against those scammers ?

    • Re:So when a mail like this hits Bush's email acco (Score:4, Interesting)

      by abb3w ( 696381 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:42PM (#9739988) Journal
      So when a mail like this hits Bush's email account, that would be a threat to him.

      Yaas! Based on traffic to a couple of my older accounts, several of the 419 team are using the standard "10,000,000 VAL1D E-MA1LZ!!!" CD of addresses snarfed from UseNet and the WWW. Which, I believe, included "president@whitehouse.gov" in the list of... er... targets?

      On the down side, while the Secret Service have no sense of humor ("We're paid not to", I was once told by a freind who's done Presidential detail), and while they keep a file of EVERY threats, they also don't investigate every threat in merionesianly proctological detail. Of course, they do check out a lot of them, but automated death threats sent to world+dog via e-mail would seem lower down the protective detail priority list than the crayon piece snail-mailed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

  • Cynicism underrated (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Woogiemonger ( 628172 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:10PM (#9739730)
    We should have a licensing program to use the internet. You should be required to answer a set of questions asking you about life in general. If the results say you think everyone is out to get you, then you are adequately prepared to use the internet.

  • these people are just dumb (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheWebGuy ( 745925 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:15PM (#9739767) Homepage
    In the current international climate, why would anyone send out stuff that could be considered terrorism? Now, they actually stand a decent chance of being caught. Before, it was only a minor annoyance to international law enforcement. Now, the senders are far more likely to be caught and punished severely.

    Not that there's anything wrong with that from our viewpoint though :)

  • I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jotok ( 728554 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:16PM (#9739775)
    Item: DHS is highly concerned with any kind of hacking or spamming under the umbrella of "critical infrastructure protection."

    Item: the US has already been spun up once before by snipers and the threat thereof.

    Question: Given the above, do you suppose that this kind of thing will be taken seriously by the government? Or, perhaps, the proper terminology would be "Too seriously."

    And if so, what would be done about it? Probably nothing overseas; but what about the thousands of COMCAST and Cox Cable customers who leave themselves wide open to being hijacked to relay spam?

  • Sure ! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:17PM (#9739781)
    Dear Mr Assassin

    I am willing to pay the 40.000 USD to you as soon as possible.

    However, since my money is an old war treasure (33.234.177 USD exactly) locked in an anonymous account in the Canaries, in order to pay you, I need someone in your country to act as intermediary. And God has put you on my way to help me achieve this holy task.

    I just need you to send me 28.000 USD in advance processing fee and...

  • Yay, now I'll get spam saying: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gentoo Fan ( 643403 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:23PM (#9739828) Homepage
    Enlarge your penis... OR DIE!!

  • please don't snip me (Score:4, Funny)

    by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:23PM (#9739831) Homepage
    aren't there enough problems in the world without drive by hair cutting?

    e.

  • Account Info (Score:5, Insightful)

    by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:44PM (#9740010)
    The surprising thing is that this individual provided bank account info.

    This leaves the scammer far less anonymity than he would normally seek to have.

    Especially given that this was a death threat, revealing account info of the sender or an associate of the sender on the first email seems not only out of character for scammers (who are increasingly protective of personal details recently) but downright stupid.

  • The wrong idea (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gzip Christ ( 683175 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:45PM (#9740016) Homepage
    It sounds to me like somebody got the wrong idea with everybody raving about how much they love SpamAssassin. It was probably somebody who does not understand English very well (most likely from Soviet Russia) mistakenly thinking that people love it when spam assassinates you. Ah, the dangers of taking Slashdot too literally.

  • Flattery (Score:4, Funny)

    by Penguinshit ( 591885 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:49PM (#9740035) Homepage Journal

    Personally, I'd be thrilled to know that I pissed off someone enough to warrant taking out a contract on me.

    perhaps I need to get out more often...

  • This explains the threat level increase... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jeeves99 ( 187755 ) * on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:08PM (#9740182)
    This must be the "chatter" the CIA and NSA picked up on when Homeland Security raised the threat level from Mango Orange to WillyWonka Fireball Red. Now if you don't mind, I need to go back to homedepot for duct tape and plastic tarps. [dhs.gov]

  • New type of 419 request (Score:4, Funny)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:29PM (#9740324) Homepage
    Dear Sir or Madam, I am sure you have heard of the "419" scam where people with millions of dollars attempt to trick gullible people into paying thousands of dollars in fees to set up accounts to receive the millions of dollars. Wouldn't you like to get into the action?

    I am an experienced 419 scammer, having worked for one of the most famous 419 scammers around, Narob Kulad. I have decided to set up shop on my own and am gathering investors for such a project. Once we have 10 million US dollars, we will begin to send out emails to gullible investors. We only need $34,000 to hit our target of 10 million, and I am selling shares at $1,000 per share to achieve that goal. Our expected return is 400% within one month. We plan on paying back 50% of the profit to our investors at the end of the month and reinvesting the rest for future gains.

    If you are interested in purchasing shares, please write to me at....

  • Please Help Me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PSaltyDS ( 467134 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:59PM (#9740653) Journal
    How do I sign up for the Federal Do Not Assassinate List? I need to know NOW!

  • This is not new (Score:5, Informative)

    by lone_marauder ( 642787 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @04:02PM (#9740682)
    Page 25 of this [state.gov] pdf has a sample of this scam from when it was sent via snail-mail in 1994.

  • Few men in the USA have any reason to fear (Score:4, Funny)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @04:15PM (#9740822) Journal

    Most of us were snipped shortly after birth.

  • This seems more than just odd... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Thedalek ( 473015 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @04:50PM (#9741165)
    Okay, the 419 scams are pretty weird to start with, but this... something about it just doesn't ring true. So far, there only seems to be one of these emails out there. It's pretty well known among the web-savvy that if you mention Nigeria in combination with any sum of money, you're probably talking about a scam. Throwing in assassination seems overkill.

    This seems more likely to be a "Joe Job" to get someone else in trouble.

  • Oh this is SO bloody OBVIOUS. . ! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @06:00PM (#9741913)
    Does anybody really think the CIA or another alphabet soup agency isn't behind this? --That they didn't plant some agents whose job it is to raise distrust so as to facilitate public acceptance of a tidy lock-down of everything, including the internet, at some not-so-distant future date?

    Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot; "They just wouldn't DO something like that!"


    -FL

  • Nigeria has oil and Christian-killing Muslims (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wytcld ( 179112 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @06:35PM (#9742328) Homepage
    ... unfortunately it's mostly Christians on top of the oil (who have their environment totally trashed during extraction), so invading for the sake of the Christians and the oil isn't a coherent policy. (Would we let that bother us?)

    Does anyone know whether most of the Nigerian scammers are Muslim or Christian? The country's split about evenly betweent the two groups. If it's the Muslims, well, some of them are fairly free about killing people....

    On the more serious side (more serious than murder?): Why doesn't the West simply cut off all electronic banking connections into Nigeria? Phone and Internet lines too? Obviously, because they have lots of oil. Still, if we cut them off, and they cut us off, who would give up first? Can the most-populated African country survive without the world?
  • I'm serious.
    It worked with mortage spammers, and I'm convinced that it would work equally with 419 spammers. It attacks them via the same statistical model that they use.

    Spamming is based on two sem-related statistics:

    1. If you send your request for business/money to enough people, even an abysmally small response rate will allow you to make money.
    2. anybody who knows about spammers knows not to respond.

    What we're currently suffering under is #2: That was the initial response to spammers -- don't respond, and hope that they go away. Unfortunately, that's overwhelmed by #1. We just got it a bit wrong.
    It's not that we shouldn't respond to them -- it's that we should not give them our business.

    If everybody who was annoyed by spam (i.e. everybody reading this) spent 1 minute a day doing something intended to annoy the spamming community, we'd make their life hell. Remember: there's thousands of times as many of us as there are of them. 1 minute a day times the billion or so internet users out there would come to millions of man-hours would come to about 50,000 man-years per month. Even if our one-minute of work cost them an average of one second to respond to it, that would come to ovef 10,000 man=years/to deal with our counter-spamming over the next year -- and that's 24hour day years, not 8-hour shift-days.

    Considering that there's only supposed to be about 100 or so hard-core spammers out there, that means that we're looking at about 100 person-years which means that (at 3 shifts/day), that each spammer would have to hire about 300 people just to shift thru our responses to find legitimate 'marks'.

    And there are other things we can do to them too...

    • Engage them in useless conversations.
    • find out which credit cards they accept, and write/phone those companies asking them to dump them. (enough requests will cause them to do a profit-loss analysis)
    • do anything you can think of that would cause them to lose time/money/energy.
    Don't let the above list limit you. Come up with your own ideas. Remember -- You don't have to spend a large ammount of time on this. More to the point, you shouldn't spend a large ammount of time on this. The strength is in the numbers.

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