Nigerian Scammers
Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:20 am
I will preface this by saying I'm not a racist asshole or anything. I could not care less where someone is born on this planet.
Having said that, I've discovered a mildly amusing pastime. I go into a chatroom from time to time, and I am literally bombarded with these messages from people coming from Nigeria claiming to be a lonely woman in need of love, money, and/or my Google Hangouts ID.
Invariably I get a message that goes something like:
HELLO GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR MY NAME IS MR JENNIFER JAMES IT IS VERY NICE TO MEET YOU
CAN WE PLZ TALK ON HANGOUTS TO GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER MORE BETTER?
Now, I'm not a putz. I know that these scammers are engaging in identity theft. The idea here is that some gullible sucker (i.e. not me) will go "Hot darn, Mr Jennifer wants to go out with me, I'll do whatever they ask" and so I give them my Hangouts ID, which is then used to harvest as much data about me as possible, including IP address, and of course social engineering where I'm supposed to be a sucker enough to hand over my bank information for them to loot.
They use VPNs to disguise the fact that they're from Nigeria, so their profile thing says "Female, age 31, United States". They then proceed to ask me where I'm from, despite it clearly saying Canada.
So I started getting clever and asking them where in US they are from; they reply by saying "Alabama" (for instance). Me not being a native US citizen, I refer to a quick glance of the states of the USA and deliberately pick out a city NOT from their supposed state, and then say:
Oh so that means you must be from New Orleans, Alabama then?
(New Orleans is in Lousiana, not Alabama)
And I get a reply:
YES I AM FROM THE NEW OLREANS ALABAMAR CAN I HAVE UR HANGOUTS PLZ
And so I lead them on for a bit before calling them out on their BS. They typically then end up abusing me in Nigerian Pidgin ( ) and then blocking me.
I have no life.
Having said that, I've discovered a mildly amusing pastime. I go into a chatroom from time to time, and I am literally bombarded with these messages from people coming from Nigeria claiming to be a lonely woman in need of love, money, and/or my Google Hangouts ID.
Invariably I get a message that goes something like:
HELLO GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR MY NAME IS MR JENNIFER JAMES IT IS VERY NICE TO MEET YOU
CAN WE PLZ TALK ON HANGOUTS TO GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER MORE BETTER?
Now, I'm not a putz. I know that these scammers are engaging in identity theft. The idea here is that some gullible sucker (i.e. not me) will go "Hot darn, Mr Jennifer wants to go out with me, I'll do whatever they ask" and so I give them my Hangouts ID, which is then used to harvest as much data about me as possible, including IP address, and of course social engineering where I'm supposed to be a sucker enough to hand over my bank information for them to loot.
They use VPNs to disguise the fact that they're from Nigeria, so their profile thing says "Female, age 31, United States". They then proceed to ask me where I'm from, despite it clearly saying Canada.
So I started getting clever and asking them where in US they are from; they reply by saying "Alabama" (for instance). Me not being a native US citizen, I refer to a quick glance of the states of the USA and deliberately pick out a city NOT from their supposed state, and then say:
Oh so that means you must be from New Orleans, Alabama then?
(New Orleans is in Lousiana, not Alabama)
And I get a reply:
YES I AM FROM THE NEW OLREANS ALABAMAR CAN I HAVE UR HANGOUTS PLZ
And so I lead them on for a bit before calling them out on their BS. They typically then end up abusing me in Nigerian Pidgin ( ) and then blocking me.
I have no life.