A few months back I wrote an item, about racism on the ‘Net which was an introduction to reality.
There is, of course, more than simple race prejudice, there is sexism and the chauvinism that comes from those who reside in 1st world nations contra those in the 2nd/3rd/4th world.
When the great Cyber Highway opened, Americans were driving by as we walked or took the bus. As time has passed, the American cars have gotten old, many have broken down, and we pass them.
This is because anyone in America, even a double digit had Internet access and in the 3rd and 4th world one had to be fairly bright to figure out how to get on, where to go, what to do.
As is usually the case, those who are faced by locked doors and prejudice develop ways to deal with exclusion.
For many of us, it was (is) the use of a sexually undefinable nickname, the lack of an identifiable photograph, and a masking of personal data.
We pretended to be white American males in our thirties regardless of race, nationality, sex or age.
This kind of masking led to the famous Nigerian ‘Scott Grant‘ scam.
In Cyber Cafes in Lagos, young men would use the image of handsome white American males, and claim to be in the Peace Corps. They would find American females on dating sites and play them to the point of marriage.
The female in America, thinking she was communicating with an altruistic handsome white man, would send money to Nigeria to her ‘fiance’.
This went on for years until exposed by Oprah.
As bad as this was, the Jamaican Lottery Scam trumped the ‘Scott Grant’ ruse, and millions of dollars was fleeced from unsuspecting Americans who were made to believe they won a non-existent lottery.
The reasons why these scams were so simple and successful was in the inert prejudice of the responders who would never think that, (in the first case) a Nigerian would have the mind set to play the game, and in the second, that Jamaicans had no way to know where a person lived, or their telephone number (unaware of off-shore billing).
The belief in that a person is who s/he says s/he is, with all the accouterments pertinent, is how Scams develop and perpetuate.
There needs to be a gullibility in the victim sprinkled with a bit of prejudice to rule out the possibility of deception by the perpetrator, for a scam to be successful.
If ‘Scott Grant’ was in Vancouver, an American woman would be a bit more suspicious. She’d search the phone books, online, to ascertain if there was a Scott Grant in Vancouver, and how old he was, where he lived, etc.
The same is true if the Lottery was in Canada. There would be checks made as to its legitimacy before the money ‘to pay the taxes’ was sent.
But as Scott Grant was in Africa, and the Lottery was in Jamaica, those basic checks were never accomplished.
That is because no one in America thought, for one moment that a person living in Nigeria or Jamaica had the capacity to play them.
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What! This is shocking news to me. Never in my life did i think that people can do this sorts of things but you have just confirmed my fears. I used to think this things are not for real now I know better. I have often asked myself why Americans don't like people from west Africa so it's because many were played online? I was in a dating site one time and this was purely innocent I was working on something so I registered in one of th sites so that I can see for myself what people talk about. Each time a guy would come up and request for friendship he would make it very clear on his profile that he is looking for a serious person and he is not willing to send anyone any money or get anyone a visa. And then they would also say that they are not a lottery where money can just be picked at pleasure. Last but not least they would say that do not want to be associated with anyone from Nigeria or Ghana for that matter.now I realize that it was just being biased but something had to have happened for them to say that. Then it was also mandatory that you had Skype so that you could verify for sure that you were talking to someone real. This online games can really make someone go insane and just do stuff that is not right. Thank God I found the truth and got me out of this sorts of things.