TCHS Alumni News - Corrupt African Officials Make Comeback

	ARCHIVE

My late uncle was a crook...

Corrupt African Officials Make Comeback

May 16, 2005 -- Readers are advised that the "corrupt African official" scammers have once again raised their ugly faces from behind their respective rocks after a much appreciated hiatus.

Several registrants last week received mailings of the shopworn "my uncle-cousin-father stole the money from the public works department and I want to deposit the money into your bank account so we can share huge profits" scam. In this case it was limited to the list of new registrants on the index page of the alumni directory.

Here's our dilemma: If we put the email links behind a login barrier, fewer people get unwanted mail, but
(1) our costs go up, because we have to constantly replace passwords and emails for alumni who can't remember how to log in, and
(2) our registrations go down, because people perceive the barrier as unfriendly.

In fact, in three years, a half million page views, 90,000 readers and thousands of personal messages, the number of verified spam messages has been under 500. It's almost always the newest registrants, so there's sometimes concern about whether they've made a mistake by registering. We apologize but consider that an acceptable trade-off, since it helped us to find YOU!

Unless you answer the message, this will be a one-time occurrence for most alumni.

Our system is quite secure, and it is not possible to harvest email addresses in bulk. We do not share the alumni mailing list with third parties. We've just reset the directory index page so that it does not display email links, since most of the garbage has come from that one location. That said, nothing can prevent individuals from clicking the links and sending messages, but it's one at a time, and they always give up quickly, because it's too time consuming. We wonder about what pitiful lives these folks must be leading that they perceive this as a worthwhile endeavor.

And now the good news: Thanks to a government grant, the computer science department at TCHS has discovered a new solution (research results forthcoming in a major national publication.) It's called the DELETE key, and it turns out there's one on every keyboard. All you have to do is press it, and the spam goes away.

If you have further thoughts or ways your fellow alumni can reduce spam, please contribute them via the Forums. I've opened a topic under Miscellany for this purpose.

Thanks for understanding that while we can produce a pretty good alumni magazine that's on a par with most commercial web sites, we cannot stop fools from being foolish.

-RC

And the beat goes on...

UPDATE July 26, 2005 - A recent registrant asked that we remove her name from the alumni rolls after a similar incident. Here is our reply:

Dear ...,
We're sorry you had this problem (we estimate it affected about 13 users over about an hour last week), and we hope you'll continue your registration at TCHS Alumni News.
Your email address was not revealed. Here's what happened:
---------
In order to minimize spam in the system we provide a link from individual listings in the directory, including the ten most recent registrants, whose names and links to individual contact forms appear on the index page of the directory. About six times in our three-plus years, some poor fool has sent their silly solicitations to the ten and to no others. The reason they don't continue is that it is so very inefficient; they give up when they realize how time consuming it is to send messages individually. It is unlikely you will receive any other junk in this way.
---------
Since April, 2002, we've delivered nearly one million page views to our 1,400 plus registrants and to thousands of casual visitors. Last week we served 5,155 pages to 805 readers. The total number of spam forms generated was 13, and that last happened about three months ago. On an annual basis, that translates to less than 50 spam messages out of a quarter million pages. Statistically that makes our approach among the most successful we're aware of.
Since you obviously recognized the message you describe as garbage, my guess is that you also pressed the magic DELETE key, so I must assume no harm was done.
Your address is NEVER published openly, unless you do so yourself by typing it into an open text field, e.g., in your personal comment.
Our dilemma is this: If we "hide" all the links behind a login, we impose a barrier to alumni. During this initial growth phase, putting up barriers makes the system harder to use. Later this year we intend to begin requiring that senders be signed into the system before sending messages to registrants. We cannot prevent all kinds of spam while also maintaining the ability of classmates to contact one another. Our approach is a compromise that has been very successful statistically but cannot prevent an individual sending individual messages. They always give up after a few mailings, because it is so inefficient for them.
I'll await another response before taking any action. I hope you'll want to preserve this method of contacting fellow alumni.
Sincerely, Rees Clark, Ph.D.
TCHS 1960
President and Editor
Interestingly, this one involved "corrupt Philippine officials." No doubt yet another benefit of globalization.

We're contemplating one simple change; we may remove the email form link from the new-registrants list on the index page of the Directory. Readers will need to find individuals within the Directory to make contact. A little nudge in the right direction with minimal impact on legitimate readers.-RC

Reader Comments

Discuss this article in the forums!

No comments yet!