The Internet is those set of networks or machines that uses the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol suite (TCP/IP), connected through gateways and sharing a common name and address (RFC 1244). The Internet with the capital letter ‘I’ should be carefully distinguished from the internet with small letter ‘i’. The later might not necessarily be built on a TCP/IP protocol and could be a multiple small networks in a campus network (internetwork of networks, shortened for internet)
The Internet was an improvement over the early 1970s ARPANET which had a lot of flaws. Two engineers in the U.S department of defense started working on this modern Internet. Surprisingly, they never knew that what they were working on is going to support the global business, education and totally replicates the entire activities of mankind into bits and bytes.
When the idea of the global network (Internet) that could stand even a nuclear war started germinating in the U.S DoD, people dismisses it as just science fiction. But now the Internet has come to stay. It has come to break every international boundary on earth. A mouse click you are in China, the other in Russia and the other Zanzibar that sort of thing. The Internet has made the world flat, flat in the sense that it has created a favourable environment for people to compete globally irrespective of their locations, race and technological advancement. Whether you are a Russian astronaut aloft in a spacecraft, a Bedouin tribesman in the desert with PDA/cell phone, or a Canadian work –at-home mother with her office in a spear bedroom, you will be able to connect with nearly anything or anybody anywhere. You will be able to participate in telephony, teleconferencing, telecommuting, teleshoping, telemedicine, tele-education, televoting and even telepsychotherapy not to mention a few. I am a practicing network engineer in Nigeria and belong to different networking fora online. A times when I make contributions on these fora, engineers from advance countries clap and even make references to my contributions. Often times, I make contributions on network securities that is even beyond the comprehension of some of these engineers born and practicing in the US. Thank god for the Internet.
For fifteen years and counting, Nigeria has been battling with positioning itself on the Internet. while the developed world have fully integrated into the Internet , from virtual Internet banking, online degree programs, online medical surgery to online home businesses; Nigeria is still lingering with epileptic, expensive and insecure Internet service. Most internet service providers in Nigeria had ran out of business relying on old Vsat technology, and living the meager Internet user in a misery. The sadder story is that the government is not truthfully helping matters.
Two realities stand out from the rest in Nigeria’s IT milieu. Firstly, more than 90 percent of Nigerians are computer illiterate. Secondly, the remaining percentage lacks the awareness to tap the resources on the Internet. Sadly, these percentages are not exclusive of the academic environment. I have met senior professor who cannot open an email address or print a document from the Internet. How then can they learn? what kinds of graduates are these educators going to produce , because a graduate with computer education is ten times more productive than a graduate without a computer education. The people in charge of our society are scared of the computer keyboard; they fear that computer will not let them be in charge. But this reality they most embrace, and it’s the path to changing our society.
I had a time in Onitsha , Asaba, lagos and Benin in southern Nigeria, and I had encountered hundreds of Internet fraudster between the ages 18-20yrs sending scam mails in hundreds of thousands. This is the lifestyle some Internet users in Nigeria have chosen for themselves. Not minding the fact that the western media is blowing this threat out of proportion, this is not good for confidence in e-commerce with Nigeria. For instance, the amount of credit card scam that is going on in China alone is more than that of the whole Africa. China and Russia is harboring some of the most dangerous criminal hackers in the world, they spent time developing criminal software that will enable them hack into your switches to steal money because of their poor economy, though the software developers in Moscow and St.Petersburg get higher payment paralleling those in the UK and the US. But a BBC reporter will be more interested in reporting a scam mail sent by a Yahoo Boy in Nigeria inviting an American business man to deposit some money in an account to help make away with some stolen wealth from a Nigerian government coffer. Foreign entrepreneurs that agree to such offers are also of doubtful characters.
I started working as a server administrator with an Internet café in a university town. I opted for the job because I needed a round the clock access to the Internet. While my co-workers were busy chatting in yahoo messenger looking for romance online, I was busy studying with free simulated online tutorials ranging from networking to e-commerce. After a while, I was making extra money from downloading free software repackaging them and selling them to my clients: collecting viruses, extracting there source codes and mailing them to a network security consultant in Bombay. And also making extra money from downloading and reselling e-books with free resale right. That extra money was seven times my monthly salary.
The activities of Nigerian based scammers (a.k.a yahoo boys) can be stratified based on the type of yahoo boy in question. There are three species of yahoo boys which I call:
Type A, Type B, and Type C
Type A
These types of scammers are moderately determined and given an alternate source of income will rather not engage in such criminal activities.
Type B
These types of scammers are also moderately determined and mostly scam for fun, having to do stuffs like that online fascinates them. They are mostly teenagers from well to do homes.
Type C
These scammers are the most dangerous types; they are criminally minded and have chosen to be bad people even before they had contact with the Internet. The Internet just enable they conduct a stay-at-home-theft and are mostly within the ages of 25-35yrs. These scammers can conveniently speak with more than five international English accents – as an Arab, Indian, Chinese that sort of thing.
70 percent of the scammers in Nigeria falls into the type A group. To them it is just business which they make a living out of. They use this means to send monies to their folks at home as such the some folks sometimes encourage them to sustain the returns. Type B and C are lavish spenders mostly hanging out in rather raucous parties spending on cute women. After expending their take for a couple of months, they go broke and return to their drawing boards (laptops) to restrategise.
Type A scammers being moderately determined average 8-10hrs on a daily basis preying for victims, while the more determine type C average 15-18hrs preying for victims online. The impact of the activities of this scammers on the local economy is minimal as most local entrepreneurs are computer illiterate and don’t agree with online transactions. In fact this has gone a long way in reducing local crime rate on the streets since the crimes now are transportable through the Internet to the advance world which is less risky for scammers.
Their attack methodology
These scammers execute their attacks in phases:
Phase one – Scouting and foot printing
In this stage, they go in search for online chat fora like Myspace, yahoo, facebook etc, romantic forum is a gold mine because they get people dying to get romance online. The age group of their target victims is very important to them. They aim at women between the ages of 35-45 and men within the ages of 45-55 that will be easily carried away by cute looking faces they don’t have courage to approach offline.
