You don’t have to be dumb to fall for Nigerian email scams. According to a suit filed by a renowned psychiatrist’s son, Dr. Louis A. Gottschalk lost perhaps $3 million over 10 years to scammers from Nigeria. As the LA Times puts it: The court documents, filed last month in Orange County Superior Court, allege… 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 »
Sometimes the old tricks are the best. AP reports of a man who allegedly claimed potion could turn paper into money: ANOKA, Minn. – A 22-year-old Savage man faces charges of theft by swindling after allegedly claiming he had a chemical potion that could transform plain white paper into U.S. currency. Franklin T. Forlemu was… Read More »
I was intrigued by this effort to count the number of blogs around the world and offer a break down by region, if not country. The results, though very rough, and which include large slabs of the world (like South America), offer up some interesting conclusions, particularly for Asia. Bottom line is that there is… Read More »
This week’s Loose Wire column in WSJ is about visualizing news. Researching the column I had a chance to interview Craig Mod, the guy behind the excellent Buzztracker. Here’s an edited transcript of our chat: Craig Mod: We have over 550,000 articles in the DB now, spanning back to Jan 1st 2004. “Buzztracker” went from… Read More »