Indonesia’s Islamic council of ulemas, MUI, has concluded their session with the issuance of the nineteen fatwas, or legal opinion concerning Islamic Law. Contrary to what the non-Muslim world thinks, a fatwa is not a sort of death sentence, although in certain circumstances and for some people they can be. Most are mere clarifications on where… Read More »
Great piece in The New Yorker by Mitchell Zuckoff (thanks, John) about a 419 Nigerian email scam that dates back to 2001 involving an ordained minister, John W. Worley. You think you know how these scams work but read on. These people are much more sophisticated and tenacious than the spam you receive. Also, the… Read More »
It’s interesting, if you like this kind of thing, to see how online scams learn from each other. Until recently I thought of the Nigeria 419 scam — where you’re contacted by some grieving African widow, burdened with millions that she wants to share with you, if only you’ll let her park it in your… Read More »
Hong Kong has done its bit to crack down on Nigerian e-mail fraud, jailing its first Nigerian scammer : Hong Kong has successfully prosecuted its first Nigerian email scammer. A 30-year-old Nigerian man was jailed four years today for a US$26 million scam, in which he was convicted at the District Court of attempting to… Read More »
Is it time that financial websites just stopped communicating with customers via email? I would have thought it was a bit extreme, but I’m not sure banks can be trusted to continue sending out emails to customers. I’ve talked before about how emails from institutions are hard to distinguish from phishing emails, further confusing customers,… Read More »