TR Forums

Nigerian scams were funnier
http://www.spamscamscam.com/

famous scam, ignore they survive on the weak that get scared

Imagine what they could do with politicians with the threat of finding images of them at parties while they were in college. It seems that any debauchery committed these days can be used against you and force you to resign even if it was years ago and it's context is long since lost.

Wait a second. What kind of person would be ignorant enough to fall for this scam AND yet own Bitcoin to send?

If grandma reads this email, she won't know what a Bitcoin is. So she couldn't send money to the scammer even if she wanted to.

So who is this scam targeting?

When the bitcoin craze was going on, I heard plenty of people talking about it and getting in that are not very techy and probably get in trouble with malware and stuff all the time.

mikewinddale wrote:

Wait a second. What kind of person would be ignorant enough to fall for this scam AND yet own Bitcoin to send?
If grandma reads this email, she won't know what a Bitcoin is. So she couldn't send money to the scammer even if she wanted to.
So who is this scam targeting?

Someone smart enough to follow the instructions (the target is supposed to buy bitcoin), but dumb enough to fall for it. In this case, they're not targeting grandma. Since the scammer has nothing invested, if it only works 0.000001% of the time, it's a huge success.

Speaking of which, I'd be morbidly curious to know the success rate of various scam types. I know that's impossible info to ever get, just sayin.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

When the bitcoin craze was going on, I heard plenty of people talking about it and getting in that are not very techy and probably get in trouble with malware and stuff all the time.

Right, even if the alleged password is wildly inaccurate I could see this being effective against someone who is moderately tech savvy and has a lot of money/assets/reputation that they care deeply about. Exactly the sort of person the cryptocurrency boosters' "put USD in, get even more USD out in six months!" marketing spiel was aimed at.