One of the curses of going online is the flood of spam emails making a variety of fraudulent claims. A lot of them seem to emanate from Nigeria, where corruption is endemic, but they are spreading to all corners of the Internet Globe.
From their frequency, I assume there are people online who are falling for these scams, and there seems to be little or nothing that Internet Service Providers are doing to put a stop to them. I find this surprising. After all, if they can't, or won't, police their fraudulent clients, who will?
These scams vary in their fraudulent offers. The most popular is where the sender has access to an enormous sum of money, apparently deposited by a now deceased client of theirs who left no next of kin, and in return for the cooperation of the recipient, he will share in the windfall. For his part, the recipient will have to provide his personal information, which can then used for identity theft, and also make a substantial administration payment to facilitate the transfer of this non existent sum of money. Needless to say, once paid, the hapless victim is left high and dry and poorer for the experience.
The other popular scam is winning a lottery, and the scammers use email addresses from reputable companies to give authenticity to this type of fraud. There is always an administration payment required, and again, hapless victims are falling for this on a daily basis.
There are always dishonest people hoping to profit from the misfortune of others. With the global economy in a downward spiral, and with unemployment in many countries at an all time high, the hope of instant riches to solve the problems of those at the end of their tether is often too great to resist.
And finally, there are the scams from public international bodies such as the UN, offering to compensate victims of scams, again in return for personal details and an administration payment.
The Internet is exploding at an alarming rate, and to many, it is out of control. It is the beast that cannot be slain, like the Hydra of Antiquity, but that is a poor excuse. The first port of call must be the ISP's. Without an email address, these scammers couldn't operate.
Time for a complete rethink on the way the Internet is policed. As a starting point, I would like to know how these scammers get access to my inbox. I appreciate that they are sent to "undisclosed recipients", so my actual email address is not being used, but that doesn't stop them arriving with alarming frequency.
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