I JUST GOT A RECHARGE.........HOW GULLIBLE CAN NIGERIANS BE?
Greetings dear friend,
Nigerians are a very interesting set of people and quite frankly, they have a keen sense of humour. Undoubtedly, there is hardly a dull moment with them. Many times, I reflect on the pains and agony we go through daily as a people and yet manage to keep ourselves together without resorting to a full blown civil war. Many countries have disintegrated due to much lesser challenges than we have experienced. It shows that we are, generally speaking, A VERY TOLERANT and ACCOMODATING group of people. WE EASILY ACCEPT THINGS AS THEY ARE, MAKE OUR WAY AROUND CIRCUMSTANCES AND MAKE THE MOST OF OUR DIFFICULTIES. Though these are very nice attributes, the recession in Nigeria has exposed a major flaw inherent in many Nigerians even the educated ones: OUR TENDENCY TO MAKE THE MOST OF OUR DIFFICULTIES SEEMS TO BECLOUD OUR JUDGEMENT LEADING TO GREED AND ULTIMATELY MAKES US GULLIBLE TO MANY SCAMS!
This is the only valid conclusion I can draw from the plethora of scams and ridiculous links broadcasted by educated Nigerians on Whatsapp and other social media platforms. I mean, it is exasperating that such scams will even be broadcasted in the first place! This has nothing to do with recession or Buhari. This is plain expression of gullibility. Yesterday, I got a message as shown below:
I just got a recharge. You can try to get it too http://recharge-promotions.com
I knew what to expect, so I did not pay any heed to it. What company will just be distributing free recharge cards to everybody? As typical of my beloved country people, it spread like wildfire! In less than 1 hour, I have gotten that same message more than 50 times! Are you kidding me? All manner of people were sending me this crap. Youths, graduates, fathers and mothers, people working in respectable corporate organizations,etc. Now the simple question i asked those that my finger typed a response to was have you gotten yours? have you gotten your own recharge card, how much was it and what network? That question will always hit a brick wall or get a response along this line at best: TRY IT. But some are even worse off than the original scammers; They will go ahead to tell you that they have received their own recharge card. Such people have excised the last vestige of honesty from their character set.
Does this quickly remind you of the emirates airlines two tickets scam? Lol. In that plot, our phones were inundated with messages like this:
Only heaven knows the number of people that got the two free first class tickets promised.😕
A LITTLE INVESTIGATION REVEALS NIGERIANS ARE TOO GULLIBLE!
Just a little investigation and you will see that Nigerians are actually too gullible. This is no rocket science. Let us take the case of the recharge card.
The message comes thus:
I just got a recharge. You can try to get it too http://recharge-promotions.com
When you click the link, you are taken to a page where you are to fill in your phone number as shown below:
When you input your phone number and click on proceed to recharge, you are presented with a page that says YOU SHOULD SHARE THE PAGE WITH 10 WHATSAPP GROUPS TO CLAIM YOUR RECHARGE. It appears as shown below:
This should make it very clear that it is a scam! How does sharing the message in groups lead to airtime recharge? What monitoring system is in place to ensure that after sharing to 10 groups you get the recharge card? But you see, as a prove of been gullible and blinded by greed, people go ahead to share this message with all their groups and contacts. They in turn catch the bug and spread it even further and before long, your phone battery is drained, having been inundated with this scam message. One will expect such scam to be dead on arrival, but lest I forget, these people have a different set of scientific believes:
- You can charge your battery to 100% instantly by sending messages to 5 Whatsapp groups
- You can get 9gb of data on any network valid for 2 months by sending messages to whatsapp groups
- You can call and SMS for free by sending bulk messages to whatsapp groups
- You can get Whatsapp for free (WHICH WAS DECLARED FREE BY THE OWNERS MANY YEARS AGO) by sending bulk messages to groups.
- You need to send bulk messages to whatsapp groups to enable Whatsapp free calls video calls and private/anonymous chats
- You can activate Whatsapp without internet by clicking a link! The exact message they broadcast is sent thus:
Now,You can do Whatsapp Without Internet From Today. Whatsapp launches Ultra-Light Wifi Feature to Enjoy Free 3G Internet wherever you go for whatsapp application,Click On Below Link to Activate Now - http://ultra-wifi-activation.ml
THE DANGERS OF BEEN GULLIBLE AND TRYING OUT EVERY SCAM OFFER
As innocuous as these offers might appear, they could actually be insidious. The time we live in has seen technology advance unprecedentedly. Interestingly, these advancement has been not only on the positive side, but also on the negative side. By the way, there is a popular saying that even in Free town, nothing is free. Some possible dangers of been so gullible as to fall for every scam offer are outlined below:
1.PHISHING:
You must be aware of phishing. You can Google that up. Phishing is a trick used by online fraudsters to defraud people and obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and other confidential data by posing as a legitimate entity. You can never know the real intent of those that create those links in the first place. Am not sure they will host the site and create those campaigns just for fun!
2. SPAMMING & IDENTITY THEFT:
One clearly evident consequence of this gullibility is exposing yourself to spamming. Each time you are presented with these offers, you are made to input your name, phone number and sometimes email address. This definitely opens you up to an influx of spam text mesaages and emails. You simply wonder when you subscribed for such service or why you are getting so much spam mails, don't forget when you willingly gave up your email and phone number.
Worse than spam mails, text and subscriptions is identity theft. With identity theft, some one uses your personal information to take action on your behalf without your knowledge. This is a very serious problem in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is so serious that the United states government has a presidential taskforce on identity theft whose services can be accessed here: www.identitytheft.gov while identitytheft.org.uk puts it thus:
"Identity theft is becoming an increasingly common problem in the United Kingdom, as fraudsters discover more and more ways to get hold of the information which is required to steal someone’s identity.
Identity theft rarely involves the unauthorised taking of a victim’s personal possessions, however it does involve the perpetrator of the crime taking the victim’s personal information and then using this in an unauthorised way for their own personal gain.
What personal information might criminals take?
Any time that a criminal gets hold of a piece of your information, and then uses that information for their own personal gain, it can be considered to be identity theft. Criminals can even use seemingly harmless pieces of information, such as your date of birth, to commit identity theft. Many companies in the United Kingdom will ask you for your date of birth as part of their verification process, so getting hold of your date of birth may enable a criminal to access other information about you."
3. VIRUSES AND OTHER MALWARE:
Virus, worm, trojan and other malware distributors are on the prowl. They are relentlessly experimenting their latest codes and you just might be their next victim. The effects of some of these viruses are better heard than experienced. They range from partial/complete data loss, data theft, to device malfunction, etc. You just don't want to be at the receiving end!
4. LOW SELF IMAGE & BAD REPUTATION
This might not seem very obvious but it is true. When you are always on the look out for what is free and what is cheap, it affects your psyche. space and time will not let me expatiate on this, as it is beyond the scope of the little piece I intended to put together here. We ought to seek for value not cheap and free!
The other thing is that it could ruin your reputation among intellectuals. When you send a risible message to an enlightened person, they begin to wonder how on earth you as an informed person could be so gullible to believe such and go ahead to forward same to them. It affects your ratings and reputations negatively amidst enlightened people.
HOW TO STOP BEING GULLIBLE!
COMMON SENSE: common sense can keep you safe from most of these scams. By making a simple analysis using your common sense, you will easily spot a scam offer. Don't be in a hurry, just make use of that free resource called common sense. For example, how can someone promise to make you use Whatsapp without internet? How in heaven's name will the messages and all other data be transmitted and received? Maybe you will use witchcraft.....lol
ASK QUESTIONS: There is a popular saying that a person who asks questions never goes astray. You should ask the person that sent you the message if he has tried it and what was the result. Most times, these messages are sent by friends and family members. Let them authenticate the offer and if they can't why make yourself a guinea pig? You can also ask someone else that you think might know better than you do. Truth be told, not everyone is equally tech savvy so those in the know might come in handy when in doubt.
STUDY TO KEEP ABREAST OF CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS:
I like the way a mentor of mine Bob Proctor puts this.
Know the truth and the truth shall set you free and there is only one thing to be set free from which is ignorance. How do you set yourself free? It is through study. The truth is that mobile phones, laptops and the internet have come to stay as a part of our lives. We cannot at this point do without them. That is practically impossible. Ipsofacto, it behooves you to study and acquire a basic knowledge of how they work and some of the latest developments on the telecom world at least as it concerns your phones and other gadgets you own. This knowledge is freely available from reputable technology blogs and websites such as xda forums, android police, android pit, yomitech, Naijatechguy, etc.
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