As 2010 starts to wind down, the security vendor on Thursday unveiled its rankings of the most widespread Internet scams from the past 10 years. Though the cons themselves may vary, the pattern is typically the same, according to Panda. Cybercriminals initially contact their victims through e-mail or a social network, asking them to respond back by e-mail, phone, fax, or some other means. The crooks will then try to gain the trust of anyone who swallows the bait, eventually finding some excuse to request money.

The seven scams ranked by Panda included the Nigerian con at the top followed by a variety of other favorites.

Nigerian scam: As the first type of scam to show up online, the Nigerian con is still popular among swindlers. You’re promised some type of reward or share of the profits to help get a large chunk of money out of a country, typically Nigeria. You’re first asked to pay an initial sum to help with bank fees. But of course, once you’ve sent that money, the crook takes a hike.

Lotteries: A play on the Nigerian scam, you receive an e-mail announcing that you’ve won the lottery. But you need to pay some upfront costs to cover bank fees and other expenses, money that you, naturally, never see again.

The girlfriend ploy: A beautiful Russian woman wants to fly to your country to meet you. Because of some last-minute snafu, she needs you to send her money to cover airfare. But after the money is wired, she disappears, along with the cash.

Job offers: You get a job offer from a foreign company where you can work from home and earn thousands of dollars by putting in just a few hours each day. Sounds like a cushy gig. But if you accept the offer, you’re asked for your bank account information, which the crooks use to store money stolen from other accounts, thereby tagging you as an unwitting accomplice in their crime.

Facebook/Hotmail: The bad guys grab your log-in credentials to Facebook, Hotmail, or another service and change your password so that you can no longer access it. Then they send a message to all your friends claiming that you’ve just been robbed while on vacation and need money wired over to pay off the hotel bill.

Compensation: A recent sequel to the Nigerian scam, this clever con sends you an e-mail claiming that a fund has been set up to reimburse victims of the Nigerian hoax, and that you may be one of the lucky victims. But to receive your compensation, you naturally have to kick in an advance fee of $1,000.

The mistake: In this popular scam, the crooks contact you if you’re selling a house, car, or other pricey item. They offer to pay right away by check. But they send you more money than you wanted and ask you to refund the difference. The check you got bounces, and you’ve lost whatever cash you sent them.

“As with all the classic scams that predate the Internet, many of the numerous users that fall for these tricks and lose their money are reticent to report the crime,” Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, said in a statement. “If recovering the stolen money was difficult in the old days, it is even harder now because criminals’ tracks are often lost across the Web. The best defense is to learn how to identify these scams and avoid taking the bait.”

Source : cnet

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If you were present at the last barcamp Nigeria in May, I think this shouldn’t be new to you. I made a short presentation about it and got quite a number of people interested in the idea of a tech hub. Read more here.

The goal

We hope to create a hub where geeks and those interested in technology can have access to the facilities (Fast PC, Internet, Power and resources) to get their ideas off the ground.

It is modeled around successful hubs around the world including Africa (iHub, SiliconCape). I believe very strongly that there are great ideas waiting to be birthed by our young people.

We have not made much progress on it, we need more people to join on the legworks. Also more corporate sponsorship is needed. Mail: info@techhubng.com if you are interested.

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You heard it, Taafoo.com the massively growing social networking site has joined the exclusive list of top-ten most visited sites in Nigeria.

We have followed the sites activities since early this year and It’s been impressive! In our monthly ranking, we saw taafoo.com moved from 56^th spot in May to 14^th in June and then 15^th in July and now on the 9^th spot.

The site help its users connect with Celebrities, other site members and buy stuffs easily online! It’s a full fledge “Social Commerce” and entertainment site.

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The service is expected to drastically reduce cost of internet connection and other telecommunication services.

Some examples include:

• Teleconferencing
• Distance learning
• Disaster recovery
• Telemedicine
• Internet connection

The COO, Mohamed Jameel said : “For GSM, CDMA, Wimax operators and ISPs, Glo 1 offers extremely attractive prices on both short and long term basis, resulting in enhanced profitability for the customer through flexible terms of contracts tailor-made for the customer type and requirement,”

This implies that, even MTN and other telecom operators can buy bandwidth from GLO to cater for their customers’ needs.

Main One recently arrived, now its GLO 1, we expect all these to disrupt the market and help increase competition there reducing the prices.

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I salute the courage of the IT folks at the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for their foresight by opening up recruitment exercise of the agency to the public via the internet.

The platform is good and nice, a great initiative indeed! The site and subsequent TV and other media ads has increase the awareness of the agency and consequently helped it hit our top fifty ranking of Nigerian sites.

We must also recognize the impact of unemployment in the country and how people are beginning to troop on to the site. My concern really is, will this not make corrupt people get employment into the agency (as in the case of police)?

NDLEA is an agency setup by the government to tackle the menace of drug trafficking in and out of the country. They have performed quite well in recent years! If you want to stop the scourge of drug trafficking in the country why not join them?

BSC Degree is required for the top spot while minimum of O’Level (SSCE, WAEC, GCE, NECO) is required for other cadre of the agency.

While I like the initiative, I am totally against the N1,500 scratch card being sold to applicant. It’s a government agency and I expect that it should be compassionate to the economic situation of the country. I know is not a profit driven sector, so why are they charging this much? If my calculation doesn’t fail me, the agency can make as much as N1.5billion naira if a million people apply for the program. I really am not sure if they will need up to a thousand staff!

This is fish… I beg!

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Nairaland.com remain in the number spot follow by punchng.com . nigerianbestforum.com moved 4 places to stay on the 3^rd spot while gtbank.com remain on the same spot as last month.

Taafoo.com break into the top ten for the first time as other veteran on the top ten list remain there except for ngrguadiannews.com.

We saw a record growth in educational sites on the top fifty-list as 3 (waecdirect.org, yabatech.edu.ng and laspotech.com) new tertiary institution websites join the league. Lasunigeria.com could not meet up with the top fifty but it showed a massive increase in growth, currently on 54^th spot.

In all we have about six website making the cut for the first time while just 2 sites came back to the list after dropping of in recent month.

View this month’s table here.

Top Ten

The Movers

• smslive247.com 50
• web4africa.net 36
• bbnsms.com 25
• nigeriamasterweb.com 16
• nigerianelitesforum.com 13

The Shakers

• mobilitynigeria.com 17
• naijapals.com 15
• careerenigeria.com 14
• smshulk.com 12
• independentngonline.com 12

Debutants

• ndlearecruitment.org
• waecdirect.org
• laspotech.com
• yabatech.edu.ng
• web4africa.net
• smslive247.com

Rebounds

• bbnsms.com
• nigeriamasterweb.com

Trends

There is education frenzy in the air, Waec result was recently released while the private WASSCE (GCE) is starting next week. Also quite a number of universities are conducting registration for new students and require that they do so online. This has helped increase the ranking of the sites.

In all, 50% of the top ten sites are news site, while others are forum and a social networking site with gtbank.com as the only corporate site making the list.

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Internet is driven by content; that is why on the internet, people say; content is King! Kenyan Government has recognized this and taking right steps to make it work in the country.

The program was launched in June this year and attracted 166 proposals submitted in the Government Information Portal (Firms) category. The winners were selected from that list. See what they intend to offer;

1. Octopus ICT Solutions Ltd for their ‘HIV and AIDS in the workplace e-Learning Course‘ that will bring HIV and AIDS workplace policy to every

civilian servant in the country. Starting with training for over 40,000 health workers in the first year, Octopus will develop an eLearning course that will work to sensitize civil servants on how to address HIV and AIDS at work and in their private lives. The course will help to reduce stigma and create a safe and supporting working environment for all civil servants including people living with HIV.

2. Infotrack Strategic Solutions Ltd for their ‘Teacher’s Portal‘ that will link teachers to their employers, the Kenya Teacher’s Service Commission. Teachers across the country often have to travel al the way to Nairobi to access service. The portal will allow the TSC to reach teachers country-wide with services and teachers to communicate easily and effectively with the TSC. The portal will also have public facing competent allowing citizens to review information on teachers in each county.

3. iBid Labs for their ‘Kenya Online Museum‘ project that will seek to document Kenya’s history online. Through multi-media, ibid labs will capture 3 million years of Kenyan history to be distributed online and accessed from mobile phones. Inspired by over 25 museums in Kenya that host a rich history of the country, ibid started their project several years ago by extensively researching Kenya’s history. The grant will give them the opportunity to realize their dream of making Kenyan history accessible to all Kenyans.

4. Foundation Support Services (FSS) Ltd for their ‘IVR Tax Filing Solution‘, which will offer a voice prompted option for tax filing. The Interactive Voice Response system will allow any Kenyan with a mobile phone to fill taxes in variety of Kenyan languages. The system will help more Kenyans fallen their tax requirement. The team at FSS have a variety of experience in voice enabled technology and are passionate about making service available to all Kenyans country-wide.

5. BTI Millman Company Ltd for their ‘eMazingira Software Application‘ – an open source application that will run on Ushahidi’s crowd-sourcing platform. eMazingira will concentrate on documenting and collecting information on environmental degradation and abuse. The environment is one of Kenya’s most precious resource and eMazingira will help citizens ensure that our natural resources are preserved for future generations. Citizen will be able to report environmental degradation cases to a dedicated mobile short code number and the information relayed to the relevant authorities for action. People will then be able to view reported cases and the actions being taken on an online interactive map of Kenya.

6. RiverCross Technologies Ltd for their ‘EDUWEB – An education institution listing and interactive mapping portal‘ that will provide a comprehensive list and interactive map of all education institutions in the country allowing users to locate institutions by proximity to relevant locations. The solution seeks to integrate data already available from the Ministry of Education, as well as additional information–all accessible from a computer or mobile phone. The portal will allow students and parents to research and identify the best schools and will also the allow the public to view and analyze vital data on educational institutions.

7. JBA Advertising Co Ltd for their ‘Lost and Found Project‘, which will collect information on the hundreds of IDs and official documents lost every day and provide an online and mobile based solution for search and retrial of lost documents. Loosing an ID can be quite a debilitating experience, and yet the document could be lying in a building or office nearby. With security and privacy in mind, JBA Advertising will build on a platform they have developed over the years to enable Kenyans to find their documents by accessing the internet or a query from their mobile phone.

Source: Kenyan ICT Board Official Press Release

I really hopes other African countries (Nigeria most especially) will follow this great gesture. This will create jobs and stimulate innovation.

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Facebook is a phenomenon no doubt; it’s the talk of town from the US to Uk, to India, Brazil and other countries of the world. If it were a country, it would have been the 3^rd most populated country in the world following only China and India.

Africa is not left out in the Facebook frenzy! Millions are now using the platform in their daily lives; employers are beginning to complain about the man-hour being wasted on the site by their employees. Though, originally created for students, it has been used for various means ranging from, socializing, volunteering, fund raising, politics, and business!

Below we did a brief analysis and comparison of how African countries are using the platform;

Egypt has eventually overtaken South Africa as the top Country in Africa using Facebook, with an astonishing 4.08million users; it warped South African strong hold on the site. Surprisingly, South African has more females than Egypt on the site; 1.58million for South Africa compared to 1.53million for Egypt.

South Africa is the only country on the list with more females than males and with the highest spending on Facebook. Nigeria on the other hand has male users more than times two of the total females on the site. In terms of spending, Nigeria is on the second spot after South Africa.

Currently, only 6 African countries has more than a million users on Facebook; Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia and Algeria. Kenya is approaching a million but has as much as 135,240 users to hit a million. The internet space in Kenya is waxing strong; it should be able to cross the line before the end of the year.

Nigeria has more than 11 countries users combined namely; Ghana, Senegal, Mauritius, Uganda, Libya, Cameroon, Zambia, Rwanda, Malawi, Mozambique and Mali.

Mali currently tops the table from behind with handful 44,360 users.

Why Using Facebook stats?

As the world shrink more and more, culture in developed world are fast spreading to other countries, in Africa the story is no different. Firstly, we need to understand that, effective social media/network usage requires spending time on the sites; in Africa, the price of internet connection is still more or less a luxury so, as we grow from using basic internet features, we shouldn’t expect social network adoption to be dramatic. The high-flying countries (top six) are with a minimal exception in this case.

Whether we like it our not, adoption of social media still consume couple of things; man-hour and money. As more Africans logon to the top sites, businesses in Africa are beginning to recognize the potentials of these sites hence spending more to promote their services. In economics, they call it capital flight, well… for as long as we consume… business must go on, if you consume, you pay for it!

On a lighter note; Facebook usage is a good sign of development on the continent as it can be leveraged to achieve other daunting tasks facing the continent. Nigerian president recently rescind his decision to ban the Super Eagles from international football after pleas from his Facebook fans, In south Africa, it was used during the election and we have seen how crowd sourcing innovative product (Ushahidi) from  Kenya is changing the face of the continent around the world.

Do you have a Facebook account? How long do you stay on it?

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