By Emeka Aginam
While the menace of advanced  fee fraud popularly known as 419 and  spam mails remain a challenge to governments of the world, latest Microsoft’s Security Intelligence report, Volume 9, has revealed that  advance fee fraud mails accounted for 8.6 percent of the spam messages blocked by Microsoft’s Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) in the second quarter of 2010 alone.

Currently, spam is flooding the internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.

Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send — most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.

With no permanent solution on the ugly trend which accounts to not less than 90 percent mail, email spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. Email spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses. Email spams typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive.

Many people – anyone with measured phone service – read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional money. On top of that, it costs money for ISPs and online services to transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers.

The Citizenship lead for Microsoft Anglophone West Africa, Dr. Jummai Umar-Ajijola, who disclosed this at the just concluded first West Africa Cybercrime summit that demonstrated  and showcased  how West Africa is stepping up to address the impact of fraud, helping to break the cycle through greater economic opportunity  lamented that advance  fee fraud, particularly 419 scams, has plagued West Africa, causing more harm than good in the region’s reputation.

“Microsoft is committed not only to protecting Internet users from scammers and cybercriminals, but to working with West Africa to combat this problem. We believe this summit is a great opportunity to fight advance fee fraud” she said during the conference with the  theme, “The Fight against Cybercrime: Towards Innovative and Sustainable Economic Development,” organized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Microsoft.

Earlier, the  Vice President Namadi Sambo  in his keynote address told the audience that “Cybersecurity is not only something difficult to tackle, but also which requires creative thinkers, talented policy makers who will understand and make people understand why and how a strong cybersecurity framework is a must for the creation of a vibrant national economy.”

President of Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria, (ISPON) Chris Uwaje had  said that the impact of Cyber-Crime  is so colossal that it has the capability of wiping out development gains of a nation and retarding her growth fortunes by many decades – in terms of GDP.

Such nations, he said   may fall victim to organized cyber security threats and invariably become a digital colony to electronically unbreakable nations.

“Cyber-Crime and Cyber Security as the greatest and perhaps most dangerous threat to the development of mankind living on the planet earth today. Today, Cybercrime and Cyber Security   have become perhaps the most critical issues on the global development agenda for almost all governments.

To many informed countries, it has become a matter of life or death – because the survival of their nations now revolve on the dynamics of Information and Communications Technology.