[A12n-forum] Beware of email scams!

["Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From time to time a colleague forwards alerts to a Mande studies list about
email scams along the lines of "No bank is ever going to ask for your
account details via e-mail." There are a lot of scam artists using a wider
range of schemes to pry financial information and cash transfers from the
gullible and the trusting. The victims are in all world regions - I read not
long ago that an increasing number of Africans are among those taken in
(sorry don't have the reference).

This point was brought home to me recently by an email claiming to be from
the "Bill Gates Foundation Internet Lottery Expansion in Africa." The pitch
was that active email addresses in Africa were being selected to receive
grants as a way to expand internet use on the continent. To those of us
savvy to the ways of the internet would laugh at such a claim, but it might
look just plausible enough to someone a little familiar with digital divide
news items and the existence of the Gates Foundation.

How many people are taken in by such scams I do not know, but it is sure
that 1) the number of new email users in Africa is increasing and 2) the
sophistication of email scams will increase. If there are not already
efforts to educate users in Africa about how to identify scams and what the
basic basic "don't's" are (like don't send your bank details to someone you
don't know via email), then some thought should be given to it.

I don't look forward to the day when spam and scams start going out in
African languages, but that would be a perverse sort of indicator that
localization has become mainstream.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project