Viruses, worms and unwanted e-mail aren’t the only nuisances in cyberspace.
Take spammer [aayyttmm@netscape.net], for example. Aytm (for short) claims knowledge of millions of government dollars stolen by Nigerian officials and wants financial help to retrieve them from European bank accounts.
Aytm promises a 15 percent finder’s fee for investors in his benevolent effort. Sure.
Known as “advance fee frauds” or “419” schemes, the lucrative scams have long had the attention of America’s Secret Service and international law-enforcement agencies.
It seems hundreds of dimwitted individuals and corporations with Internet domains have been victimized by Aytm and other African con artists.
So much for the assumption that only the intelligentsia has computer acumen. (7 SEPTEMBER 2003)
