Forum Moderators: buckworks
These IP addresses are in LONG format, which makes for faster searches than dotted IP addresses. Don't convert these addresses, store them this way in the database. When you capture your visitor's IP through script, convert it to LONG and then search the DB. You are looking BETWEEN the addresses on this list:
(ex: assuming the LONG format of the visitor's IP was 123456, your SQL would say "... WHERE StartIP <= 123456 AND StopIP >= 123456")
If you need other countries, let me know my list is accurate as of June 1st 2004.
StartIP - StopIP
2554290432 - 2554290687
1384120576 - 1384153087
1388388352 - 1388388391
1388388608 - 1388388623
1372014592 - 1372015871
1372017152 - 1372019455
1372020224 - 1372020735
1372059648 - 1372060159
1360142592 - 1360142847
1360142848 - 1360143359
1360143360 - 1360143615
1360143616 - 1360144383
1360144384 - 1360144895
1360145152 - 1360146431
1360510976 - 1360511231
1360511488 - 1360511583
1360511616 - 1360512767
1360527360 - 1360531199
1358397952 - 1358398207
1358399488 - 1358399743
1358400512 - 1358400767
1358401024 - 1358401279
1358401280 - 1358401535
1358402048 - 1358402303
1358402320 - 1358402343
1358402368 - 1358402399
1358403328 - 1358403583
1358403840 - 1358404095
1358404608 - 1358404863
1358405120 - 1358405631
1358430208 - 1358432255
1358432256 - 1358432511
1358432512 - 1358434303
1358569472 - 1358570495
1358570496 - 1358573567
1358899968 - 1358900223
1358900752 - 1358900767
1357368832 - 1357369087
1120735744 - 1120735999
1120736256 - 1120736511
1120740352 - 1120740863
1114513152 - 1114513407
1104239360 - 1104239871
1079417600 - 1079417855
1061597696 - 1061597951
1061763584 - 1061763839
1061775104 - 1061775359
1067481600 - 1067481855
3245212416 - 3245212671
3250388992 - 3250405887
3252410368 - 3252410623
3252411648 - 3252411663
3252413184 - 3252413439
3252427264 - 3252427519
3252428288 - 3252428383
3252432128 - 3252432255
3252433408 - 3252433663
3252440320 - 3252440383
3490581760 - 3490582015
3493634560 - 3493634815
3505644032 - 3505644287
1349823488 - 1349823999
1349849600 - 1349849855
1347977216 - 1347977727
1347977728 - 1347977983
1347978048 - 1347978231
1347978240 - 1347978335
1347978344 - 1347978351
1347978368 - 1347978487
1347978496 - 1347978623
1347979008 - 1347980287
1347980544 - 1347981311
1347981312 - 1347981823
1347981824 - 1347982335
1347982336 - 1347982799
1347982848 - 1347983615
1347983616 - 1347983871
1347983872 - 1347984383
1347984640 - 1347985151
1345983232 - 1345983487
1118963472 - 1118963479
1118963488 - 1118963503
1118975744 - 1118975999
1118977424 - 1118977431
1118979840 - 1118980607
1118982408 - 1118982415
1118985984 - 1118986111
1103610112 - 1103610367
1101792256 - 1101792511
1080967184 - 1080967199
1080974592 - 1080974847
1080988416 - 1080988671
212230144 - 212230399
1041302528 - 1041302783
1043917568 - 1043918079
1043919872 - 1043920127
1043920896 - 1043921151
1043921664 - 1043921919
1051533312 - 1051541503
1052876800 - 1052884991
1063567616 - 1063567871
1063572992 - 1063573247
1063750144 - 1063750399
1063750912 - 1063751167
1063751168 - 1063751423
1063751424 - 1063751679
1064170920 - 1064170927
1064171648 - 1064171775
1064171776 - 1064171855
1064171872 - 1064171903
1064171912 - 1064171919
1064171928 - 1064171935
1064171968 - 1064172031
2830892288 - 2830892543
3223835392 - 3223835903
3228844544 - 3228844799
3228847360 - 3228847615
3228848128 - 3228848639
3228849408 - 3228850175
3228857344 - 3228857855
3228858624 - 3228858879
3228859136 - 3228859903
3228860160 - 3228860927
3228861952 - 3228862463
3228866816 - 3228867071
3228871168 - 3228871423
3272087040 - 3272087295
3276287744 - 3276287999
3281028608 - 3281028863
3282493440 - 3282493951
3282494976 - 3282495231
3282495232 - 3282495743
3282496000 - 3282496255
3282496512 - 3282496767
3282496768 - 3282497535
3282497536 - 3282501631
3285952768 - 3285953023
3287860480 - 3287860735
3291034112 - 3291034367
3291036160 - 3291036415
3291036672 - 3291036927
3291037184 - 3291037439
3301441536 - 3301445631
3395787264 - 3395787519
3397764608 - 3397764863
3399083776 - 3399084031
3399525888 - 3399526143
3490136320 - 3490136575
3490137344 - 3490137599
3516900928 - 3516901119
3516902144 - 3516902399
3519475712 - 3519476223
3519477488 - 3519477503
3534864640 - 3534864895
3547663104 - 3547663359
3551686400 - 3551686655
3553364992 - 3553365247
3553452544 - 3553452799
3563061760 - 3563062015
3563062016 - 3563062271
3563062272 - 3563062527
3563068416 - 3563068671
3563068928 - 3563069183
3563340800 - 3563341055
3563341056 - 3563341823
3563342080 - 3563347967
3567617024 - 3567617279
3567617792 - 3567618047
3567622964 - 3567622967
3567623056 - 3567623071
3567626240 - 3567627008
3582737920 - 3582738431
3584466944 - 3584468479
3584471040 - 3584475135
3585425408 - 3585426175
3585426176 - 3585426687
3585426688 - 3585428479
3585428736 - 3585429503
3585430016 - 3585431807
3585432064 - 3585433599
3585695744 - 3585695999
3585696000 - 3585697791
3585699840 - 3585700095
3585702912 - 3585703167
3585835840 - 3585835847
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3590307936 - 3590308031
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3590314496 - 3590314751
3631672064 - 3631672575
3632639488 - 3632639743
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3633030400 - 3633030655
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3639396448 - 3639396463
3639401728 - 3639401983
3639401984 - 3639402015
3639402040 - 3639402047
3639402072 - 3639402079
3639402096 - 3639402175
3639402192 - 3639402199
3639402208 - 3639402239
3640312576 - 3640312607
3640312640 - 3640312831
3640317184 - 3640317439
3640439040 - 3640439295
3641353088 - 3641353151
3641353184 - 3641353215
3641353728 - 3641353983
3641354496 - 3641354751
3641354752 - 3641355007
3641355008 - 3641355263
3641357824 - 3641357855
3641358336 - 3641358847
3641593856 - 3641594623
3641594880 - 3641597951
3642028304 - 3642028319
3642028328 - 3642028503
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3642028608 - 3642028671
3642028704 - 3642028735
3642028824 - 3642028863
3645784576 - 3645784831
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3648323584 - 3648324095
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3648324864 - 3648325119
3648325120 - 3648325631
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3648326400 - 3648326911
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3650225040 - 3650225079
3650225120 - 3650225151
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3650226176 - 3650226303
3650226432 - 3650226687
3650226816 - 3650227071
3650227200 - 3650227839
3650228224 - 3650228263
3650228480 - 3650228735
3653405696 - 3653406975
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3653409792 - 3653410047
3653410064 - 3653410175
3653410208 - 3653410303
You'll be surprised how eager they are to please. So, do respond. I promise you - it's worth it ;)
It won't be as much fun when you end up on their "easy merchant" list and all his friends and family start placing orders on your site.
It's like with marketing, you have cold-calls, you have done-deals, but you also have "prospects."
So even if you think something is funny - when 90% of merchants never even respond to them, then any response puts you into the prospects category for future attempts.
So even if you think something is funny - when 90% of merchants never even respond to them, then any response puts you into the prospects category for future attempts
I'd say that's rubbish. You attribute to them a sophistication, intelligence and organisation skill that they just don't possess. I've been doing this for years.
It's not like they've got a central database that they clean on a regular basis. And, you forget one thing, they are stupid but they are greedy, self-serving b*stards. They won't want a friend of family member suddenly taking away the prospect they worked so hard to get - a dumb e-commerce merchant. If they've found a place that will take their order and ship them goods they'll keep very quiet about it.
So, dismiss any fears of getting more attempts. Game them. You'll enjoy it :)
"HELLO THERE,
I AM BAMISE JOSEPH, THE MANAGING DIRECTOR OF MARCKCLASSON INC.ON BEHALF OF THE COMAPNY I AM HEREBY WANT TO ORDER FOR THESE PRODUCT CALLED,
Tsunami sp-5100 5.1 speakers and Blue317 - 256 .
.OUR COMPANY IS LOCATED IN AFRICA NIGERIA, COULD U PLZ TELL US THE ESTIMATE SHIPPING OF 40 QUATITY OF THESE ITEM TO AFRICA NIGERIA AND THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF THE ORDER. AND THE PAYMENT MEHOD FOR INTERNATIONAL ORDER.
BAMISE JOSEPH,
MANAGING DIRECTOR OF MARCKCLASSON INC.
THANKS."
The copy and pasted products in lowercase are a really nice touch to its authenticity.
DeAr mR JOOsepH,
i Am vEry eXciTed DaT MARCKCLASSON INC wANtS t0 BiE
Tsunami sp-5100 5.1 speakers and Blue317 - 256
wE pReFRe lArGe VOluMe oRdeRs. 40 is tOO sMall. cAn YoU TAKE 4000 unITs?
wE tAkE CheQs aNd cRedIt CaRDs fOr PaYMenT
pLeaSe eXcUSe tHiS tEXt. ME kEBoArD iS brOKeN.
of course with addition:
"wE caN StaRT ACConT FoR YOU So YIO Pay LaTre AFTer WE DEliVr."
I also "played around" with those guys, and then I learned what it's like to go from 10 fraudulent orders a month to 20 a day. And what it's like to have to explain to affiliates why you have 60% reversal rate all of the sudden.
It's simply too hard to believe when it starts happening.
May sort the seed from the chaff, and a page with those or similar specifics and restirctions on your site may lend itself to saving time for all valid parties. Tell them they'll need to include a specific line in the Subject of the initial e-mail or it will be auto-deleted, no atatchments, no phone calls, no faxes before cursory order acceptance subject to all normal and super-normal verifications.
I'd STEER CLEAR of sharing your bank wire info or any other enetity data with a suspect "client" account, from anywhere.
And never any expedited fulfillment on qty orders from unknown origins.
Bek :)
Wow you guys have time on your hands.
But I have played with them a few times using a different email of mine. After a few exchanges, they figure out what's happening.
I think not answering is the best approach
e-commerce: Does it make sense to say, sorry I will not do business with 100 million people because someone tried to trick me, the watchword is caution. You really have two choices, forget the transaction or take the appropriate precautions. It does not matter whether the customer is from Germany or Cameroon; Take the appropriate precautions
Here are some useful tips
1.Credit cards – Most Nigerian consumers do not have cards, period. It is the rare individual that has access to credit cards as banks have only just started issuing them in Nigeria. If they do, it is probably a debit card acquired through a foreign account and the cardholders name should match the name of the person placing the order.
Most Nigerians have foreign sounding (to you) names, so rarely will you see a Smith or a Silva ordering from Nigeria with a credit card of the same name, though there are Nigerians with these last names. So what to do
a.Make sure the name on the card and the name on the order match
b.Try to verify the address of the cardholder and the shipping address are the same
c.Get a telephone number for the customer and most especially an employer’s telephone number and verify the information, note that Nigeria is GMT +1. Only accept companies that you can independently verify telephone numbers.
d.Caution with phone numbers that begin with 080, or 234 080 this are mobile numbers and reputable companies do not usually operate from mobile numbers.
e.Ask that the customer send you a scanned copy of the front and back of the card, to ensure that they have possession of the card. The information may be faxed or scanned and sent as an e-mail attachment. If the card is stolen, there person using it is not likely to have possession of the card and so cannot comply.
2.Cheques – Cheques issued by banks in Nigeria cannot be used for purchases in any other currency that Naira, there are exchange regulations that preclude their use. If someone places an order from Nigeria and gives you a Cheque, it is important that you contact the bank to verify the Cheque.
Tips
a.Do not accept a Cheque for an amount larger than the order in which the customer asks you a refund.
b.Contact the bank and determine if the account belongs to the person placing the order with you, do not accept third party cheques.
c.Determine if the account is less than 6months old, so that you can determine if the account was setup to fleece you and finally
d.If the bank is uncooperative, ask the customer to instruct the bank to provide you with the information. When contacting the bank, find the number yourself, do not ask the customer.
3.Wire transfers
Someone commented that customers cannot send you wire transfers from Nigeria, this is wrong, of the customer maintains a foreign account with the bank, they can send you a wire transfer. So ask for a wire transfer when you are unsure. Then make sure it came from the customers account and not another account in these days of ACH.
So stop chasing away business, blocking ips etc., it may seem like we are asking a lot of you, but these are precautions you should take for any customer, Nigerian or European, anything else is chasing away business, take the appropriate precautions and you will OPEN YOUR BUSINESS FOR MORE CUSTOMERS. No my keyboard isn’t broken….
A note on IP addresses, blocking IP’s do not protect you, because most of the people will come to your site via Satellite and will show an IP in Israel, Canada, USA etc. so the important thing is to take the appropriate precautions.
[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 9:45 pm (utc) on July 22, 2004]
[edit reason] URLs removed [/edit]
May I be the first to welcome you to WW?
Not one of these "things" would protect from charge backs .or removal of funds later because they were proven to be stolen ...
Looks like paypal posting about the benefits of paypal is gonna be coming soon ..
BTW .I have personal ( paper ) documentary evidence that the some scams do involve people highly placed in the Nigerian government ...( one of these days I 'll post the full story )...Just a question of the time to type it ..and the indulgence of the mods ..cos it's along one ..
Also I have longtime friends in Nigeria ..who say that not to touch anything with a long pole is a very good idea ...they are in the Nigerian police force ..so they oughta know ..
There are even scams pulled on tourists as they get of the planes and walk along the streets which involve as many as 10 "extras" apparently totally unconnected with each other and some just "arriving" on the scene ...
This isn't to say that the three card trick and others are not played all over the world ..But Nigeria started sending out letters to certain well targetted businesses ( I got one ) in the very early 90's ....all they've done now is spread the net wider into emails ..
Even getting the phone number of the issueing bank in Nigeria from your own telephone company and then phoning them for confirmation that all is Ok isn't safe as many of the bank staff and civil servants are involved in some of the better more convincing scams ...
when you start to think of this stuff as a well done business and start thinking like you would interms of CTR and ROI etc ...it makes much more sense ..
Nigerians aren't dumb ..the all in caps emails and letters aren't dumb ..these scams work because westerners tend to think that all africans are dumb and only a few maybe are doctors etc ..and that the ex ministers wife really might type like this etc ...
My best mate for years til he went back was a Nigerian guy who I met along with his friends and family in The UK in 1970 ....He and about 50 friends ( from 2 or 3 different tribes )were there to train on the latest fighter jets ..these guys all had Degrees and years of University education ..they were not dumb in western or any other terms ...
I still had to smack a few heads tho of some other people ( white )..who thought they were dumb africans ..and said so to my and their faces ...
very nice first post
I didn't mean to endorse her/his views, just the trouble taken to express them.
I'd still state, as I have done before, that ANY card payment from Nigeria is fraudulent. Very few Nigerians have cards, those that do won't use them online, and those naive ones that are willing to use them online know the reputation Nigeria has and won't bother using the cards online on the assumption that the order won't be honoured. That applies to orders placed in Nigeria for delivery to anywhere in the world and orders with a Nigerian address for delivery to any other country.
This is a country where in the go-slow (traffic queues) one bloke crawls unseen under your car and disconnects your fuel supply and his mate down the road charges you an arm and a leg to "fix" your car that has now stalled.
This is a country where instead of windscreen washer men harrassing you at traffic lights you get a baton smashing your window in and the owner demanding you clear out your wallet (oh, and they'll have your watch as well).
This is a country where my family lives who've had someone sneak into their house, rummage through their papers and sneak out again without stealing anything. A few days later they had a total of £80,000 emptied from their UK bank accounts. Barclays did the decent thing eventually and paid back the full amount they'd mistakenly paid out. Other banks had to be sued.
This a country where police get paid less than it takes to support a single person let alone a family... so they rent their guns out to "highwaymen".
This is a country where you have to have someone on guard if you get out of your car to change a flat tyre.
This is a country where telephone engineers cut off your service so they can come around and charge you to fix it. And they do it once a week.
Sure, it has a lot of money in the oil industry. And sure there are a lot of European countries trading there who all need goods and services. And sure, Nigerian authorities are working to reduce crime. BUT never underestimate the level of corruption in the country. Banks and governments aren't excluded from this disease.
This is not an excuse for desperation, neither is it the problem of anyone else in the world. Yet there are people that are well educated as someone rightly observed, working for Chevron, Shell, Accenture, AT&T, Julius Berger, ABB, Texaco, Mobil, Mckinsey and so on and so on that do not want to buy an airline ticket to buy a camera, a wedding gown or Nintendo and can afford it. The issue is not the crime, corruption, greed and avarice in Nigeria, it is about e-commerce and most people bothering to post are doing so because they want to tap into the opportunity to sell (SAFELY). If the discussion is about the problems of Nigeria lets start a new thread on that; “Solving Nigeria’s Problems” and maybe instead of war stories we can positively contribute solutions, sounds humane doesn’t it.
The point is like every opportunity, there is RISK. Minimize your risks and you stand to make a lot of money since the customer has limited choice. Without a doubt, be very careful accepting credit cards, nothing will save you from charge-backs.
We also get the letters of great promises, do you now what we do with them, throw it in the trash, don’t even bother to read the details. I did not fall for this trick but a friend of mine did and bought a box supposed to contain a VCR cheap on the streets of NY, he was shown an open box and sold a closed one. I did not fall for it because I am not stupid.In the same city, I fell for the trick where someone hides an object and asks you to find it under one of three cups; it all depends on how much risk you are willing to take.
Finally, if you are not planning to relocate or go on vacation to Nigeria, bother not about the person that crawls under the car to cut off the fuel line or cuts off your electricity, thats not the issue
And isn't that the problem? The majority of Nigerians cannot afford to buy from most ecommerce sites.
The minority always spoil things for the majority. We have to pay extra taxes to pay the police to catch the minority who perform crimes. We pay extra taxes to take them to court. We pay extra taxes to put them into prison and feed them and heat them.
The advantage of paying the extra tax is that they are taken off the streets, allowing my house and my car safer, and I feel safer walking the street. There is a benefit.
Blocking the whole of a country where probably more than 99% of orders are fraudulent has a benefit of less risk of chargebacks. But stopping genuine orders from these countries is the 'tax' we have to pay (the profit we lose) for blanket-covering a whole country as a fraud risk
P.S. And I would not recommend to anyone to supply anyone or any company in Nigeria, unless they REALLY know what they are doing. But for most of us mortals, it is easy to refuse all orders.
snipped
[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 9:48 pm (utc) on July 22, 2004]
[edit reason] Removed off topic remarks [/edit]
[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 9:36 pm (utc) on July 22, 2004]
