A Day in the Life of a 419 Scammer

Previously, we have highlighted the practice of 419 Scamming in the story titled, “The Prince, the Priest & the Painted Breast”.

An interesting article, “Internet Scammers Keep Working in Nigeria”, has just been published, within which a day in the life of a Nigerian 419 scammer is told. Many fall into this life of crime due to the lack of legal employment opportunities and by the lure of easy and big money. But the Nigerian law enforcement agencies, aided by assistance, training and equipment from the west, is fighting back and making inroads to the removal of these criminals from society.

There are lessons the naive Internet user can learn from this article:

1. Don’t answer any emails that purport to make an offer which is too good to be true! Generally they will be too good to be true and you’re likely to be out of pocket through interacting with them.

2. Do not provide any private information about yourself to anyone on the Internet unless they are a guaranteed trusted source and even then ensure it isn’t a phishing scam!

3. Ensure any antispam solutions that are offered by your ISP are currently enabled and in use.

4. Use antispam solutions on your local computer, e.g. Mailwasher.

5. Educate yourself to the different scams operating on the Internet.

6. Treat any unsolicited email as suspicious, especially if it comes from a region of the world you wouldn’t normal deal with e.g. Nigeria.

See The 419 Coalition Website to learn even more about the Nigerian 419 scam and how to avoid being caught!