Thursday, July 30, 2015

Willie is Dead (your e-mail)

JL sent in an e-mail adding a new layer to the Willie is Dead e-mail:
A report on the economic reasons spam is almost certainly deliberately shoddy and unconvincing. I've seen it summarized as "if you're fishing for idiots use idiot bait."

Here's the paper: Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?

Here's an excerpt:
Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an
advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.

Framed that way, it makes perfect sense. You could apply this to almost anything.

In other news, Willie is still dead.

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