Fending Off Scammers
This continues entry 64 and is also a follow up to entry 53.
When I restarted to connect me to the Tchatche, I was ignorant, that it had become a major base of operation for scammers from the Ivory Coast. When I was contacted by any man, whose presentation indicated him to be in the right age and from a western country, at first I assumed this to be true.
I had been aware of English language scamming from Nigeria, I have deleted countless emails offering me large sums of money in weird schemes, without thinking twice. I have been contacted on dating sites with messages, that were so obviously absurd, that I did not bother about them. Bad English, always some god-fearing guy with children. Nobody ever was any annoyance to me.
I have been amusing myself at some time to read the funny story of scambaiters. Therefore I knew, that they needed their prey on an instant message system. When they presented their story of a catastrophe as the reason to ask money from their victims and fast, this had to be presented in a dialogue as urgent. Sending emails and wait a day for a reply would not work for such a scheme. Therefore I knew, that the scammers were operating upon the msn-messenger, but I was still completely ignorant, that the world center of scamming had moved to Abidjan on the Ivory Coast and had been adapted into French.
My French is far from perfect, but I have learned some basic rules at school, for example, that -é, -ée, -et, -est and -er at the end of a word all sound the same, but which one to use is strictly and logically derived from grammatical rules. Any educated French person with the Bac knows those rules, but uneducated people, who have learned French in the streets of Abidjan, do not.
So when I got contacted on Tchatche with a nice 'good afternoon, my name is ... , how are you', in correct French from a man apparently in Belgium or France, I reacted friendly, with no suspicion. After some short questions I was asked for my msn, but when I explained, that I would write emails, but I am not running msn-messenger, it got confusing. The guy seemed to be completely incapable to even comprehend the difference between using the same address for writing emails or for using the msn-messenger. He seemed not even to know, what emails are. And the French got bad all of a sudden too. At that point I stopped replying.
But when this same thing started to get several repetitions, the sentences being very similar all the time, like following a script, and several others also did not know, what an email is, I started to see, that something was fishy.
Therefore, as soon as someone asked for msn, I just blocked him. But it was still a drag having to reply a dozen times to each scammer before knowing enough to get rid of him. They seemed all to follow a script, asking for the name, then if married, if children, the job. So I started not to reply, but to ask them questions back, that they were not prepared for, and all of a sudden, their French was very bad, some times they even did not understand me, and when they replied to my questions, that yes, French was their native language, and that by education they were lawyers, engineers and such, I blocked them even faster.
Somehow they all were so dull and seemed not to have any personality. Once I had got aware, that I was contacted by scammers, I usually discovered them after not more than five minutes each. Admittedly, maybe I have blocked a few authentic guys too as scammers. But since they were so obvious scammers to me, I started to nearly feel pity for them, as I assumed them to be pestering me with such an endurance, because they were just so stupid, that nobody would ever fall for their lies.
At that time, I had dealt with hundreds of them, and I had managed to verify a few times, that they are indeed on the Ivory Coast.
I started to google and I found a local discussion board from the Ivory Coast. Some decent people from there were in a heated debate with the scammers. The scammers are full of raging hatred for the white people, they feel fully justified for what they do, they are convinced that they are taking back, what the first world had stolen from them and what was rightly theirs.
But what surprised me the most, was the discovery, that according to a report, they are successful, and that some of them are really making a lot of money. I considered them as stupid, but obviously they have found victims, who are even more stupid.
As I have written in entry 53, the rich countries are exploiting poor countries like the Ivory Coast, and yes, we have a heavy debt towards them to give them back, what was taken through a history of imperialism, first in a brutal and drastic way, nowadays in a more subtle hidden way. But these scammers have just one flaw in their logic: They do not demand anything from the rich and powerful, instead they make victims of the vulnerable, who have nothing to do with what the people of financial power of their country do. The scammers are justified in their demands, but criminals in their methods.
The world's hacking order is established: the financially strong exploit the financially weak countries, and the poor there exploit the stupid from the rich countries. Some of the victims might be driven into getting welfare as a result, which is indirectly paid by the taxes of the financially strong. The circle is closed.
At that point, I started to reply to suspicious contacts on Tchatche with a message, that in English is about like this:
This continues entry 64 and is also a follow up to entry 53.
When I restarted to connect me to the Tchatche, I was ignorant, that it had become a major base of operation for scammers from the Ivory Coast. When I was contacted by any man, whose presentation indicated him to be in the right age and from a western country, at first I assumed this to be true.
I had been aware of English language scamming from Nigeria, I have deleted countless emails offering me large sums of money in weird schemes, without thinking twice. I have been contacted on dating sites with messages, that were so obviously absurd, that I did not bother about them. Bad English, always some god-fearing guy with children. Nobody ever was any annoyance to me.
I have been amusing myself at some time to read the funny story of scambaiters. Therefore I knew, that they needed their prey on an instant message system. When they presented their story of a catastrophe as the reason to ask money from their victims and fast, this had to be presented in a dialogue as urgent. Sending emails and wait a day for a reply would not work for such a scheme. Therefore I knew, that the scammers were operating upon the msn-messenger, but I was still completely ignorant, that the world center of scamming had moved to Abidjan on the Ivory Coast and had been adapted into French.
My French is far from perfect, but I have learned some basic rules at school, for example, that -é, -ée, -et, -est and -er at the end of a word all sound the same, but which one to use is strictly and logically derived from grammatical rules. Any educated French person with the Bac knows those rules, but uneducated people, who have learned French in the streets of Abidjan, do not.
So when I got contacted on Tchatche with a nice 'good afternoon, my name is ... , how are you', in correct French from a man apparently in Belgium or France, I reacted friendly, with no suspicion. After some short questions I was asked for my msn, but when I explained, that I would write emails, but I am not running msn-messenger, it got confusing. The guy seemed to be completely incapable to even comprehend the difference between using the same address for writing emails or for using the msn-messenger. He seemed not even to know, what emails are. And the French got bad all of a sudden too. At that point I stopped replying.
But when this same thing started to get several repetitions, the sentences being very similar all the time, like following a script, and several others also did not know, what an email is, I started to see, that something was fishy.
Therefore, as soon as someone asked for msn, I just blocked him. But it was still a drag having to reply a dozen times to each scammer before knowing enough to get rid of him. They seemed all to follow a script, asking for the name, then if married, if children, the job. So I started not to reply, but to ask them questions back, that they were not prepared for, and all of a sudden, their French was very bad, some times they even did not understand me, and when they replied to my questions, that yes, French was their native language, and that by education they were lawyers, engineers and such, I blocked them even faster.
Somehow they all were so dull and seemed not to have any personality. Once I had got aware, that I was contacted by scammers, I usually discovered them after not more than five minutes each. Admittedly, maybe I have blocked a few authentic guys too as scammers. But since they were so obvious scammers to me, I started to nearly feel pity for them, as I assumed them to be pestering me with such an endurance, because they were just so stupid, that nobody would ever fall for their lies.
At that time, I had dealt with hundreds of them, and I had managed to verify a few times, that they are indeed on the Ivory Coast.
I started to google and I found a local discussion board from the Ivory Coast. Some decent people from there were in a heated debate with the scammers. The scammers are full of raging hatred for the white people, they feel fully justified for what they do, they are convinced that they are taking back, what the first world had stolen from them and what was rightly theirs.
But what surprised me the most, was the discovery, that according to a report, they are successful, and that some of them are really making a lot of money. I considered them as stupid, but obviously they have found victims, who are even more stupid.
As I have written in entry 53, the rich countries are exploiting poor countries like the Ivory Coast, and yes, we have a heavy debt towards them to give them back, what was taken through a history of imperialism, first in a brutal and drastic way, nowadays in a more subtle hidden way. But these scammers have just one flaw in their logic: They do not demand anything from the rich and powerful, instead they make victims of the vulnerable, who have nothing to do with what the people of financial power of their country do. The scammers are justified in their demands, but criminals in their methods.
The world's hacking order is established: the financially strong exploit the financially weak countries, and the poor there exploit the stupid from the rich countries. Some of the victims might be driven into getting welfare as a result, which is indirectly paid by the taxes of the financially strong. The circle is closed.
At that point, I started to reply to suspicious contacts on Tchatche with a message, that in English is about like this:
Attention: 9 out of 10 of the men, who contact me here, are scammers. I know their routine. I block everybody, who asks me for MSN. I discover all scammers. I have already blocked hundreds of them.
If you are one of them, your attempt to make me a pigeon is a waste of time. You better do not reply.
But I would be very glad, if you were an authentic European and able to convince me, that you are one to get into a serious contact.
By now, I have copied this text several dozen times, and not one European has ever answered.
