dcat
07-02-2007, 12:52 AM
When we are presented with a tempting proposition by people we do not know, what is the main reason we couldn't resist the temptation? We end up shelling out our money just hoping to get a piece of that thing that is too good to be true. Indeed, I know a few people who ended up broke because they were fooled into believing that the proposition brought unto them was true, or, actually because they were desperately hoping that the proposition was true. These have been happening to people around us, to our relatives, to our friends, and maybe if we're unlucky, even to ourselves.
Now that most of us use the internet regularly, the temptations just got more complicated. The Net is not a person who could corner (visit or telephone) you, get you off guarded, and present you on the spot how great an opportunity it is to invest on their product. You couldn't interact with a net scammer on the spot, you still have to wait for a response (at least in the present), so it means you'll have time to think. So, why do we still keep hearing people getting fooled over the internet? Isn't it easy to just ignore those ads hovering at the sides of our web browsers? At least now if we say "no", no one will try to finesse us more to reconsider. The question therefore is why do we still click?
This is the topic of a recent security research about internet spams and scams. Why we click (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2151568,00.as p) is an article at eWeek.com that tries to give us a simple answer why spammers and scammers are still victimizing unaccustomed people in the net. Most of the answers given by the article are rooted on psychological trickery. The scams appeal to our idiosyncratic private emotions, which many of us couldn't resist. The methods have become more sophisticated that we may have difficulties in noticing the trick.
It's a good read and will not take so much of your time. I hope all TF members would read it so they'd be forewarned when the time they are faced with such a scam arrives. Here are the quick guidelines of the article (see if you're following most of them):
1. Don't unsubscribe from mail if you don't recognize the sender or company sending the mail.
2. Don't publish your e-mail address on any Web site or discussion forum. If necessary, obfuscate e-mail address: for example, write an e-mail address as "myname at mycompany dot com."
3. Use a separate e-mail address to sign up for newsletters, online posting and trade shows. If the mailbox gets unwieldy, you can delete it or filter it more aggressively.
4. Use anti-spam software.
5. Don't unsubscribe immediately. After a few weeks, compare the messages you want to unsubscribe from and look for common traits, such as common strings of text that you can use to block further mail.
6. Don't reply to spam.
7. Don't buy anything from spammers.
The hypothetical figure alone is worth digesting:
"If half of the population in the United States (about 150 million people) use e-mail on a daily basis, and if only half of them (75 million) are gullible, and only 1 percent (750,000) buy into scam-spam on a given day, and if those victims were to cough up a mere $20 per scam, the potential market amounts to $15 million a day, or $105 million per week, or nearly $5.5 billion per year in just the United States."
If you think that the reality is close to that conjecture, then it is reasonable to assume that scammers would not rest until they get all of us, one by one. My only hope is that no member here at TF is included in that hypothetical 1 percent.. :)
Now that most of us use the internet regularly, the temptations just got more complicated. The Net is not a person who could corner (visit or telephone) you, get you off guarded, and present you on the spot how great an opportunity it is to invest on their product. You couldn't interact with a net scammer on the spot, you still have to wait for a response (at least in the present), so it means you'll have time to think. So, why do we still keep hearing people getting fooled over the internet? Isn't it easy to just ignore those ads hovering at the sides of our web browsers? At least now if we say "no", no one will try to finesse us more to reconsider. The question therefore is why do we still click?
This is the topic of a recent security research about internet spams and scams. Why we click (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2151568,00.as p) is an article at eWeek.com that tries to give us a simple answer why spammers and scammers are still victimizing unaccustomed people in the net. Most of the answers given by the article are rooted on psychological trickery. The scams appeal to our idiosyncratic private emotions, which many of us couldn't resist. The methods have become more sophisticated that we may have difficulties in noticing the trick.
It's a good read and will not take so much of your time. I hope all TF members would read it so they'd be forewarned when the time they are faced with such a scam arrives. Here are the quick guidelines of the article (see if you're following most of them):
1. Don't unsubscribe from mail if you don't recognize the sender or company sending the mail.
2. Don't publish your e-mail address on any Web site or discussion forum. If necessary, obfuscate e-mail address: for example, write an e-mail address as "myname at mycompany dot com."
3. Use a separate e-mail address to sign up for newsletters, online posting and trade shows. If the mailbox gets unwieldy, you can delete it or filter it more aggressively.
4. Use anti-spam software.
5. Don't unsubscribe immediately. After a few weeks, compare the messages you want to unsubscribe from and look for common traits, such as common strings of text that you can use to block further mail.
6. Don't reply to spam.
7. Don't buy anything from spammers.
The hypothetical figure alone is worth digesting:
"If half of the population in the United States (about 150 million people) use e-mail on a daily basis, and if only half of them (75 million) are gullible, and only 1 percent (750,000) buy into scam-spam on a given day, and if those victims were to cough up a mere $20 per scam, the potential market amounts to $15 million a day, or $105 million per week, or nearly $5.5 billion per year in just the United States."
If you think that the reality is close to that conjecture, then it is reasonable to assume that scammers would not rest until they get all of us, one by one. My only hope is that no member here at TF is included in that hypothetical 1 percent.. :)