I have a friend who is always telling me stories about her friend who is on a quest to get married. She's a an attractive doctor. She must be smart as she made it through medical school.
So anyway her latest move was to try match.com. She met this "terrific" guy. He sent her a picture - he was a gorgeous black man - supposedly a model from California now on assignment in Africa. Nigeria, to be exact. Anyone involved in Internet security already knows where I am going with this...
He has this match.com profile which is PERFECT. I like walks on the beach, holding hands, watching the sunset...cuddling. Ahem. Ha! I'm cringing as my friend tells me the story...
Within one week my friend's friend is hooked. She thinks he is "the one" and he says he can tell she is "the one" and doesn't want her to talk to anyone else.
...and then it comes...the story...he has these money orders or something that he can't access and needs her to transfer some money...pretty much anyone up on Internet scams knows the routines...
But she is in love. She tells my friend about it and how she's wired this money etc. and how it showed up. Of course my friend is totally freaking about it and like what the hell - don't do it. But her friend is convinced this is a good guy and sure that he must be in love with her and the bank account is real so...she ends up asking someone else who confirms it is a scam and she tells the guys she knows what is going on. And last night I guess they called her twice.
Well I told them to report all of this to the FBI immediately on the Internet crime link...or should it be the CIA as it is international...or both...my friend says "well she reported it to Match.com and his account was somehow closed..." I urged them to report it with any phone numbers they have, etc.
And then my friend asks - so what can you do about these people in huts in Africa - she says she's seen TV shows where they have computers all lined up...what can we do? It's a government thing. There needs to be an international effort to crack down on this stuff. Everyone knows there are so many Internet scams coming out of Nigeria and ripped off software and stolen goods, and hackers in China doing espianage for the government and the Russian mafia stealing credit cards and hacker organizations like Gulli.com and spammers in Brazil. Everyone knows....but is anyone doing anything about it?
And if a doctor like my friend's friend can fall for such a scam....
Hopefully Match.com has some sort of automated program that analyzes content to look for scammer type material but I am not sure how this works with privacy laws. The least they can do is make a HUGE alert on their web site to anyone signing up for and using their account. Obliviously they are not doing that since this person did not see any such warning - or it needs to be more blatant.