Nigerian prince scam emails might be gone for good

John Hopton for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online -@johnfinitum

Nigerian princes and scam emails are synonymous in this day and age. The incidence of fraud email from the country is so high that the Nigerian government is stepping in to repair the country’s damaged reputation.

Fraud investigation firm Ultrascan AGI suggests that losses from such schemes totaled $12.7bn in 2013 and that the number of so-called “Dear friend” scams is growing by 5 percent each year.

The BBC reports that identity theft is also a massive problem, while Nigeria’s Inter-Bank Settlements Systems estimates the country’s banks lost 159 billion naira ($800m) to electronic fraud between 2000 and 2013.

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In response, the government has launched the National Electronic Identity (e-ID) Card in collaboration with MasterCard, and President Goodluck Jonathan was the first recipient.

You can’t beat biometrics

The card’s Match-On-Card technology matches the holder’s fingerprint against a profile stored in the embedded chip. It also acts as a travel document, conforming to the same standards as international passports. According to the BBC: “It contains electronic identification information, as well as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology that allows for document signing, non-repudiation and encryption.”

The National eID card is: “capable of identifying two identical twins by the use of biometrics” Explained Chris Onyemenam, chief executive of Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission.

He added that it is “actually addressing the issue of multiple identities by some Nigerians… it is helping security agencies verify and fish out who the real culprit is.”

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Until now, Nigeria’s population of about 170 million has had no unified national system for recording identity data at all. Identity analyst firm Acuity Market Intelligence forecasts that half the world’s population will have a chip-based National e-ID card in five years’ time.

Monetary revolution

The cards can also be used as a form of payment using MasterCard’s chip payment technology. Daniel Monehin, division president for sub-Saharan Africa at MasterCard, says that the embedded computer chip protects cardholders from fraud and protects against the creation of counterfeit cards.

The cards will also address Nigeria’s major problem of a lack of access to banking. Although it is Africa’s largest economy, 70 percent of Nigerian adults do not have a formal bank account.

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“By giving every Nigerian of 16 and older an identity card with payments functionality, the government can effectively eliminate financial exclusion in Nigeria, and help citizens to improve their livelihoods,” said Mr. Monehin.

So the days of the Nigerian scam email might soon come to a close. But let’s be honest—we probably never should have fallen for it in the first place.

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