Comment by hughw

As a point of interest: Nigerian scam letters predate the internet. In the eighties and nineties, colleagues in the oil and gas industry, and I, received frequent postal letters, postmarked Nigeria. One memorable one I received from a high official in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, requested I keep his proposal a secret so "that my image may not be dented." We assumed they combed the Oil and Gas Directory, or the Geophysical Directory, to obtain our names. Perhaps these original, truly Nigerian scams, were less sophisticated than the later Internet imitators, since targeting technical professionals isn't targeting the dumbest of the dumb. Or, the rich veins they mined were not yet depleted.