thank you very much.

thanks for your conversation and feedback.

Let me start by saying that if this post offends you – I am very sorry. It was not my attention for this post to be about race – but a post that was a warning to people about a problem that a good friend of mine had been researching.

Having said that – it seems that some of you were offended by it and that is something that makes me sad as it could not have been any further from my mind when I wrote it.

I can see why Nigerian people would be upset about the issue of spam and what it might have done to their reputation as a nation – in the mind of some ‘Nigeria’ has become synonymous with ’spam’ – this can’t be a good thing for 99.9999999% of Nigerians who are legitimate citizens of the web. I’d also say that while I’m sure there are some Nigerians who spam/defraud that it’s probably no higher a % of Aussies, US citizens, Europeans.

I am not one to be able to say much about where this type of fraud originated from – I’ll leave that debate to others but I wanted to take a moment away from my trip to stop by and say sorry to our Nigerian friends.

@Afam – Name-calling and accusations like that don’t make you look smart because you used “big words”. Obviously that wasn’t a literal suggestion that one go to the CBN or British government. I was simply stating where the name of the scam originated, and that it was not by Tony or Darren. This has nothing to do with being a sycophant or hypocrite – it simply has to do with illustration of a point.

What is obvious is these scams thrive on the innate ‘greedy’ tendency of the victims. It takes two to tango, people. Be smart, be wise!

The level of sycophancy and hypocrisy you display on this issue is stinking to high heavens.

So, people should leave Tony alone and yell at the CBN and British Government? This is the most idiotic position I have seen anyone hold in ages.

The point is Tony made a mistake while he was reporting information.

Darren also made a mistake by relaying the information that tony reported without cross-checking in the original source.

And the end result is that a whole nation has been unjustly blamed for a crime they didn’t commit as suggested by the title of this post (Tony even posted a picture of an obviously African ghetto with the caption, ‘is this where your next advertiser is emailing from?’) and you still maintain its just a name given to a vice we are trying hard to purge.

I’ll bury spades here since Tony has apologized on his blog.

“The fact that a nation cant compete against the media of other nations does not mean her people are entirely rogues.”

I COULDN’T AGREE MORE! But neither Darren or Tony have said that they were.

There are far more serious issues out there in the world that are being attributed to people of a nation than an email scam.

@WWN – There’s no question that I am a friend of Darren’s, or that I do work with/for him. I’m completely transparent about that, so your accusation that it has something to do with what I’ve said here is because of that is useless.

There’s also no question that I would stand up for him, Tony (whom I don’t know nearly as well), or anyone else who is simply reporting information for the greater good, and find themselves under attack and accusation for something beyond their control.

The bottom line? I can totally understand that it’s a sensitive issue. I can understand why a Nigerian person might be offended. I said might, because upon my own personal 5 minutes (admittedly) of research, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t Darren or Tony who named the scam. Go yell at the Central Bank of Nigeria or the British government for naming it what they did. Go yell at the people (the specific people) in Nigeria who first started it. I stand by my first statement, that the name of the scam has nothing to do with the people of Nigeria as a whole, but rather the country from where the scam originated.

That said, I tend to agree with Jeremy… it’s time to move on to other topics, because:

1. Darren’s not available to make his own statements about his own post on his own blog, and my statements should NOT reflect his feelings. He may come back and say something completely different, or he may agree. His opinions are his, and mine are mine, just like yours are yours, and we ALL have a right to hold them.

And 2. This site’s not about racial/international injustices. If you want to fight for that cause, go for it, but you should choose the proper venue.

chinese food, german sherpherd, nigerian scam

how does that array sound to you. Great right?

I guess thats why they want to rename ponzi schemes to american pyramid schemes or commonly found trojans to ukrainian trojans or phishing to british phishing.

The fact that a nation cant compete against the media of other nations does not mean her people are entirely rogues.

However, I will point it out to you that you did not even take time to read through you referenced site (snopes); if you had you would have read about the origin. Meanwhile, as at the times and years being quoted in snopes, internet access have not reached the crescendo it has now; to warrant the poliferation of the scam in Nigeria.

Talking about being explicit or not with reference to Nigeria as the origin; I still stand by my charge against Deep Interest that there were insinuations in the write up and the picture speaks volumes.

As regards google and searches, you baffle me with that arguement. Where does google aggregate it’s result from? It is from sites like Deep Interest and Problogger that have posted inaccurate information on their sites. Google has no choice but to feed you with what it finds, that does not authenticate the veracity of any claims on such pages (search).

Get it right, It did not start from Nigeria. Just like any other thing that history and the rest of the world have re-written to point to it’s origin in Africa.

For the benefit of doubts, it was Nancy that first raised the ’stereotype issue’ and not me. I think she was genuinely concerned and unbiased unlike Lara; who to the best of my ability that have vested interest.

I am concerned about the systematic destruction a people’s character through this kind of stereotypic assumption, that is why i contend.

The scam itself was NAMED as “Nigerian 419 Fraud” or “Nigerian Email Fraud”.

Neither Darren’s post, or Tony’s post, is stating that it’s a fraud perpetrated by only Nigerians (or any other nationality for that matter).

For example, the statement, “I hate Chinese food.” doesn’t mean that I hate the food because it’s made by Chinese people. It refers to the type of food, the name of the food.

If I were to say, “Italian leather is terrible.” That doesn’t mean that I hate Italians because of their leather.

If I said, “German Shepherds are a horrible breed of dog.” I don’t mean to say that Germans are horrible people.

Get it? It’s only about the name of the scam (which incidentally, originated in Nigeria, and has been acknowledged by the Central Bank of Nigeria as having originated there: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/nigeria.asp – Go give it a good read, because there’s your proof that it all began in Nigeria.) and not a racist/hate statement by either Darren or Tony about the nationality of the people who happen to be native to that country.

Do a search in Google for “email scams” – no nationality included in that search, right? 3 out of the first 10 results show “Nigerian”.

Don’t pin this on Darren or Tony. They didn’t name the type of scam, they only report on it’s evolution. And as Tony said, yes, to be politically correct, the scam shouldn’t be named after a group of people, but in this case, I don’t feel it has been. It’s been named after the country from where it all began. You’d all realize this if you took the time to read up on it. No one, not Darren, Tony, or even whoever it was that first “named” the scam, is associating it with a nation of people. Just the nation where it all started.

Here is the simple truth,i do believe that a couple of Nigerians maybe fraudulent but a good number of us have make a living from honest jobs.

Unfortunately the world has been deceived into believing that online scams begin and end with Nigerians or 419. Nigeria and Nigerians are responsible for less than 10% of all scam schemes out there on the net with the US having over 50% of online scams attributed to it yet even people that cannot point to Africa let alone Nigeria on the map will easily jump into the bandwagon of name calling and racial profiling, what a shame.

This is what F-secure said:

“It’s a form of Advance fee fraud alias Nigerian 419 fraud.”

They didnt say it was perpetrated by Nigerians. read the post well.

I dont know why Tony would do this but its real bad.

Mr which way, thank you from taking the words from my mouth.

Not all Nigerians are bad.

(end sarcasm)