Years ago I received a scam email from Nigeria.
I replied with three words being ■■■■ off ni#ger.
To my surprise I received a reply asking me not to be a rude racist.
So apparently it was ok to try and defraud me, so long as I didn’t upset the thin skinned scammer princess.
I would say that neither of you had done anything to be proud of.
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I have to say that I have different view of the Nigerians. Firstly many of them make just $3 per day. They survive by mashing up yams frying up green bananas and not much else. Their culture is not “western”, its survive by your wits. So they apply themselves to whatever they can do to survive. For some thats scamming .
Sure not like us, we are so proper and ethical and all that, and if our social services payment does not come in every second Thursday we get mighty angry, that’s our right.
What are we all meant to do with this? Round of applause?
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So you’re telling me that the majority of Nigerian scammers only other option is mashing yams. And that stealing money from pensioners or love scamming them is not so bad cause they are poor.
Now l have admiration for the entrepreneurship of poor people in many countries and how they manage to make money but scamming is scamming.
I didn’t realize I had so many kids who:
- Didn’t know my gender
- Busted their mobile phone
- And somehow got a different mobile number.
It’s an amazing.
Some banks and services have voice-coded passphrases, and sometimes a recording of this - IE, “this is X speaking” - can work to bypass. Although this isn’t as common nowadays with 2/3FA.
Scammers can generally tell if you’re a mark within the first few seconds of the call.
Dead air? You’re not a mark
Young and sound educated? You’re not a mark
Say you don’t have XYZ service? You’re not a mark
When they say nothing and hang up after you speak, their intent is to target the people that call them back to find out who they missed a call from - those people are marks. If you don’t follow their script, they’ll hang up on you.
The best thing to do is ask what their name is. They’ll ask what your name is instead, and when you say “well you called me, what is my name?” - then they’ll hang up and scratch you off the list. Or curse you out
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Best thing to do is ignore them and/or block them.
Golden one in my work world
We’ve brought in a “cyber security consultant”
We have a cyber security team.
We in fact have a cyber security business division.
But we need a consultant.
Fine.
Consultant’s work thus far has been a) some PDFs that SECURITY is IMPORTANT and b) to get every manager to email their teams to report phishing/scam attempts via the button in Outlook.
Wonderful stuff. Glad to have you on board.
She legit said in one of the meetings “I don’t know what actually happens when you click that button. Does anyone know what happens? I’ve never clicked it”.
I won’t be going to those meetings any more.
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Its a dog eat dog world in Nigeria. There is an educated class and a merchant class there, I got on very well with them, but scamming is endemic in their lives. Scamming might just be taking a cut on business that’s introduced, or wanting a tip. None the less its a scamming based culture. Within the government its corruption and its big time there as well.
Have you had I chance to get over there at any stage?
There is not too many places I wouldn’t visit again but Lagos is an absolute shithole and put me off ever attempting to go back. Maybe one day, who knows
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Lol. Don’t get me started on this topic.
Ignore them or block them and they’ll use a different number or just try again. Show they won’t get money out of you, and to them you’re not worth the time
I spent about 3 months there; Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Abuja, Jos, Kaduna. Its not as bad as you think, but steer clear of Maidaguri. Boko Haram are around Kano and the guys from Lagos fly in for the day and fly out. If they cannot get out of there, they hire cars ( always 2 in convoy) and drive back to Abuja, which is the nicest town in Nigeria to be honest.
I’ll bet they discuss your feedback personally at “their” meeting and cross your name off the list.
I dunno, your time you’re wasting.
They have scripts that are deliberately and carefully written in order to weed out the people that they absolutely won’t get money out of. The second they spend trying to scam you, the belligerent questioner, is just one more second they’re not using the same tactics to extort another pensioner out of their life savings
One of the popular scams inside Nigeria ( and there are many) is the phantom employee.
The office managers sometimes fake employees, and collect their pay in one of his own bank accounts. They usually turn over that type of staff, in case of an audit, once the existence of the practice is suspected.
So, the heads of departments organise for snap audits. With one days notice, all employees must report to the office for a head count and ID validation. ( ID cards) and bank account proof.
There are lots of excuses. Like employiong dead people. They have a good excuse for not turning up on audit day. Shame they died just before the audit…
They’re working for cents an hour, if that
Your time though.
I only had 4 nights in Lagos and 2 in Ibadan. I didn’t mind Ibadan but just took a dislike to Lagos from the minute I landed. I can’t really put a finger on it but it just wasn’t a place I’d rush back to. Unfortunately plans changed at the time as I would’ve loved to see a bit more of the country. That was years ago and I’m not sure I’ll get back that way
I know the old Lagos Airport terminal well. It was a copy of the old Amsterdam Airport and it had so outlived its use by date when I was last there. It was a cess pit, but the fun part was the trips to the crocodile infested swamps just off the runway, where the palm wine bootleg operation is in full swing and the older airside navigation equipment and buildings is slowly disappearing into the tropical rainforest.
I used to go down to one special fast food outlet run by some Lebanese guys, the chicken swarma was really good.
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