In some cases, you can tell from the choice of words and tone of the message that it is a male scammer masquerading as a secret lady admirer. “Hallo my name is Perpetua I saw your profile at www.fb and became interested in you, I will also like to know you more and I want you to send an email to my privet email address so I can give you more pictures for you to know whom I am. Here is my email address (perpetua.daluwa@yahoo.in) I believe we can move from here!and remember distance or colour doesn’t matter anything but real friends matter a lot in life. I am waiting for your email to my privet email address above. See your reply soon.”The question after reading this mysterious missive sent to my facebook inbox on Wednesday afternoon could only be: Who on earth, who in their right senses would dare assault me, a stranger, with such horrible grammar? “For Your Information”, I almost shot back at the message now staring at me; “I have never, and will never fall for online secret admirers who can’t get their grammar right.”Perpetua’s message came as the latest in a series of spam mail that has consistently been finding its way into my Facebook inbox (ever since the spammers realised that the world now communicates through Facebook, not email).And I know what you, the reader is now thinking; “I can’t believe people are still falling for the so-called Nigerian scam after all this time”. Maybe you’re thinking, “Wow, I might have responded to that. How am I supposed to know what’s a scam and what’s real? You could as well be thinking: “Well, that’s a story so old it has become cliché.”Scammers know their victims wellEvery new day, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are logging onto the World Wide Web for their very first time.Many of these people have simply not been exposed to scams like the one mentioned above before.The fact that they may not recognise scams right away doesn’t mean they’re naive or stupid. They just haven’t been in an environment where this sort of stuff came their way before now. The scammers know this, and manipulate it to their advantage.Spammers act in pretty much the same fashion as a predator lurking in the shadows, readying for the very first cue to pounce on their unsuspecting victim.They know that they have only a limited space of time within which to strike, because it does not take very long for internet newcomers to know what spam mail or spammers are.Spammers are smart!If you noticed the comments about the spam mail I received from Perpetua, you will see that they were condescending because I knew obviously it was a cheap scam, and who in their right senses goes on to fall for a scam they already know of?Most of us would never fall for the so-called Nigerian email scam. In my case, the obviously lousy grammar gave the scammer away. In other cases, you can tell from the choice of words and tone of the message that it is a male scammer masquerading as a secret lady admirer.But if, like me, you can tell spam mail from miles away, then the whole scheme was perhaps not designed for you. People who have ever survived an internet scam usually wonder, in hindsight, why the scammers are all so predictable in their grammar and in their motives. Why not colour their tales a little different, to make more of us actually believe them?What you perhaps did not know is that a typical internet scam is designed to tip off every right thinking member of society about the fact that it’s a scam. What the spammers are really interested in is that tiny proportion of naïve and inexperienced internet users, the ones that are determined to keep their eyes shut to all the obvious clues. The spammers know full well that their core intended targets are people at the bottom of the cyber chain; people so unaware of common online scams that they must have been living in a cave with no Internet access whatsoever.The Nigeria connectionThe question is, why do all scammers seem to hail from Nigeria in particular, and West Africa in general?The answer is similar to the reasons why the spammers knowingly use bad grammar: They want you, the serious and rationale person that you are, to scoff at it as comical and move on. Once you who thinks rationally have ignored the spam mail, the spammers are now left with their core potential victims; the ones that have been living in a primitive cave until like yesterday. Otherwise, the message you just received purportedly from Nigeria could easily be from a person seated next to you in an internet café!When those of us who are not gullible hear of these Nigerian love and mega money deals, we take them for what they are; comedy. This is just as the spammers would want it, as it works to their advantage, not disadvantage.By sending an email that tickles the imaginations of only the most gullible, the scammer sets himself up with better prospects of being believed, for a spammer’s chief capital is actually their client’s trust.In other words, scammers are disqualifying the majority of potential victims in order to pinpoint the most gullible as quickly as possible. Anyone naïve enough to respond to such ridiculousness is far more likely to willingly empty their bank account.For us internet users, the safest remedy to this fraud ring is knowing when something looks too good to be true, not accepting friend requests from people you hardly know, not publishing your personally identifiable information, and of course, changing passwords too often.The Nigerian dating scams target primarily the lonely, desperate and vulnerable. And yes … emotion lowers the threshold of caution and victims can’t easily see the scam being spun around them. For this reason, the most common comment of internet spam victims is “I can’t believe I was so stupid!”The scammers spend the better part of their day plying popular dating sites and chat rooms for contact emails, and then send off thousands of fraudulent letters and emails awaiting the victim’s replies.They are offering the chance of finding true love and happiness, and there are plenty of desperate and deluded wishful thinkers! Sooner or later, the vulnerable hearts receive requests that will ultimately lead to financial losses and heartbreak. The scammers choose chat rooms and dating sites because the person in love offers the chance of the biggest payoffs.How does the scam work? The scammers start by stealing a photo from an internet site. They prefer to use images of white people capitalising on stereotypes and perceptions.The photos are usually of beautiful people and the quality of the photo is high. The photos are usually stolen from popular modeling sites. If you think you are being scammed, go to this site and browse all the photos to see if the person you are communicating with has a photo on this site. Then you will know for sure it is a scam!They also use photos taken from profiles of other people on dating sites, so remember that the photos that scammers use are not photos of themselves - they are photos of innocent victims. They also use many aliases, emails, photos, gender, age and sexual orientation in order to cast their net to catch as many victims as possible.Often the scammers use attractive female photo profiles because lots of men will respond to an attractive woman’s personal ad based on the photo alone.The rationale is that this type of person is likely to be more desperate, gullible and financially stable. They then post ads with fake profiles on online dating sites. They also lurk in chat rooms and social networking sites as well as Christian and other religious-based dating sites.
