Do People Still Fall For This?

December 30, 2009 · Posted in Information Security, Information Systems, The Internet 

I still regularly get communication like the one below from wives of presidents, sons of billionaires, daughters of a wealthy sheik, etc. and saying that with my help I can be an instant millionaire. The words in the message slightly vary, but the message is pretty much the same. This scam, commonly known as the “Nigerian Sam”, has been going on even before e-mail became widely widespread, but after all these years and after all the media exposure it has received, one would think folks would no longer fall for it and perhaps the scammers will change their tactics.

Well as illustrated in the e-mail below, and from the tons of similar e-mails I have received, it doesn’t look like the tactic have changed at all. I wonder if people still fall for them, since nothing changed on the bad guys side.

My Dear.
Greetings to you, I am Mrs. Katherine Janssen from Holland, married to Dr.Franklin Janssen,owner, engineering servicing firm attached to a Saudi Arabian oil company in Asia.

We were married but without Children and after his demise during the tsunami disaster, I fell ill and the doctor diagnosed that I have a lung cancer and have only but a few months to live.

I am contacting you in view of the fact that we could be of great assistance to each other, likewise developing a cordial business relationship towards helping the less privileged children on the street as been the wishes of my late husband since we never had children of our own.

We had a deposit of Twenty Five Million USD to establish a charity foundation in my name in order to keep memories alive. I need someone that is trustworthy that can help in establishing our dreams.

If you are capable and trustworthy to execute this noble task, please respond and I will give you the necessary details on how to get this funds.

God Bless you,
Mrs. Katherine Janssen.

Just an added FYI, the Nigerian Scam is one of the tactics used by scammers to con unwitting victims of their hard-earned money. These tactics are typically called “Advance-fee fraud”. An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam, are the Nigerian Letter (also called the 419 fraud, Nigerian scam, Nigerian bank scam, or Nigerian money offer),the Spanish Prisoner, the black money scam as well as Russian/Ukrainian scam (also extremely widespread, though far less popular than the former). The so-called Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly dissimilar organised-crime traditions; they therefore tend to use altogether different breeds of approaches. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud)

Bookmark and Share

Thought you should know, etc... Update

The Gates of Development

On new development projects, the production stage can be the point of no return. Before it's too late, a rigorous gating process can help to ensure that development activities, teamwide input and critical stakeholder priorities are all aligned with the overall project vision.

Saying No to Say Yes

I find that I’m often inspired by the sermons at my church to write a project management article.  It seems like an odd marriage of ideas, I realize, but it somehow works for me.  Well, this past Sunday’s message was no different.  As our pastor was talking about ‘saying no to say yes’ – meaning [...

Stack Overflow's Scaling Problems

Nick Craver from the Stack Overflow team has a very interesting post on issues the team is facing with respect to handling storage space created due to higher traffic and usage...

Project Management Lite: Estimating–Specify Deliverables

In order to prepare an estimate, the specifications for what must be produced by the project must be specific, unambiguous and quantitative. This requires the estimator to work out as much detail of the conceptual solution as is feasible, consistent ...

What is Story Mapping

-->

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Leave a Reply




  • Your Shopping Cart

    Your cart is empty

  • Calendar

    December 2009
    M T W T F S S
    « Nov   Jan »
     123456
    78910111213
    14151617181920
    21222324252627
    28293031  

  • RSS From the National Vulnerability Database

    • CVE-2012-1034 (episerver_cms) February 7, 2012
      Multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the admin interface in EPiServer CMS through 6R2 allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via unspecified vectors. […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2011-5076 (hdwiki) February 6, 2012
      SQL injection vulnerability in model/comment.class.php in HDWiki 5.0, 5.1, and possibly other versions allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands via the PATH_INFO to index.php. NOTE: some of these details are obtained from third party information. […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2012-1021 (4images) February 6, 2012
      Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in admin/categories.php in 4images 1.7.10 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the cat_parent_id parameter in an addcat action. […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2012-1031 (episerver_cms) February 6, 2012
      Unspecified vulnerability in EPiServer CMS 5 and 6 through 6R2, in certain configurations using Forms Authentication, allows remote authenticated users to obtain WebAdmins access by leveraging Edit Mode privileges, a different vulnerability than CVE-2011-3416 and CVE-2011-3417. […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2012-1008 (officesip_server) February 6, 2012
      OfficeSIP Server 3.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon crash) via a crafted To header in a SIP INVITE message. […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2012-0992 (openemr) February 6, 2012
      interface/fax/fax_dispatch.php in OpenEMR 4.1.0 allows remote authenticated users to execute arbitrary commands via shell metacharacters in the file parameter. […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2012-1004 (foswiki) February 6, 2012
      Multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in UI/Register.pm in Foswiki before 1.1.5 allow remote authenticated users with CHANGE privileges to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the (1) text, (2) FirstName, (3) LastName, (4) OrganisationName, (5) OrganisationUrl, (6) Profession, (7) Country, (8) State, (9) Address, (10) Location, (11) Telephon […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2012-1019 (xwiki_enterprise) February 6, 2012
      Multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in XWiki Enterprise 3.4 allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the (1) XWiki.XWikiComments_comment parameter to xwiki/bin/commentadd/Main/WebHome, (2) XWiki.XWikiUsers_0_company parameter when editing a user profile, or (3) projectVersion parameter to xwiki/bin/view/DownloadCode/D […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2012-1002 (openconf) February 6, 2012
      Unspecified vulnerability in OpenConf 4.x before 4.12 has unknown impact and attack vectors. […]
      nvd@nist.gov
    • CVE-2012-1029 (tube_ace) February 6, 2012
      SQL injection vulnerability in mobile/search/index.php in Tube Ace (Adult PHP Tube Script) 1.6 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands via the q parameter. NOTE: some of these details are obtained from third party information. […]
      nvd@nist.gov
Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes