August 7th, 2007
A Million U.S. Idiots…
By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
I just read this “article” from the the Inquirer that was quoting statistics from a State of the Net report from Consumer Reports. The author calls people from the US idiots, imbeciles and stupid, the tagline even says “Far be it from us to call them stupid. Oh, go on then.” He also has a couple other funny quotes for good measure.
A MILLION OF US IDIOTS have handed over more than $7 billion to scammers in the last two years, says a new report. (For your copy, please send full bank details to the address at the end of this story).
Consumer reporting outfit, er, Consumer Report’s latest State of the Net survey, reckons that a quarter of US consumers are likely to succumb to an online virus or spyware threat, while the number of imbeciles responding to email phishing scams has remained at a constant eight per cent. Source: Inquirer
We Say: Now, I admit this kind of ticked me off, so I went looking for similar data from the UK, last years stats said people in the UK had 45.7 million pounds stolen, or about 61.4 million dollars, if that converter was right, and over the last two years it has increased by 8,000 percent. The article he quoted said 1 million US consumers lost billions of dollars but he quotes it as 7 billion in losses caused by phishing scams, so there is not a clear cut total, and the billions lost to phishing are spread over two years. In the UK there are 25,503,325 active internet users and in the US there are 146,434,398, as of May 2007 according to this article from clickz. So, it’s really hard to compare the numbers between the US and the UK because we don’t have all of the numbers, and the way it is increasing over there, they should catch us, in average, in no time, and I bet it’s pretty close right now.
But then I thought, who cares, this is the Inquirer you’re talking about, so I thought I would ask my philosopher buddy, Descartes about Andrew’s mama.
Descartes: Andrew, I asked your daddy if your mama was good looking, and he said, “I think not.” And he disappeared! So you don’t even have a daddy. But everybody’s had your mama.
There’s no bad time for a your mama joke, if you ask me.
Mike Potter says:
Aren’t the idiots the thiefs not the victims?
August 7th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Archi says:
I think you misquoted, the sentence clearly states “A million of us idiots […]”, the authors referring to everyone, including himself. There’s a lot more internet users in the US and most scams are targetting them so hardly surprising
August 7th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Freud says:
Nope, he read it right. Look at the last line of the article
“The USA is 231 years old”
August 7th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Jimmy says:
If you look at the article, he says US consumers, US households and talks about the Department of Homeland Security.
August 7th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
dogger says:
you only need to be upset if you are one of those idiots, and if you are upset then your probably not one of those idiots because they probably wouldn’t know they are.
don’t make this a world war over internet idiots
also i dont really see this as news, more the start of an internet hate debate
August 7th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Bobby Beerman says:
Some of the stats about people responding to scam E-mails are people like me who love to mess with them. One friend strung one scammer on for about a week before he caught on. Not all people that reply are idiots, just evil.
August 8th, 2007 at 5:09 am
Jimmy says:
Actually, in the end, I was just hoping people would show up with some new your mama jokes…
August 8th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Palomar Jack says:
So much for the credibility of the author of the original article. My guess he’s still pissed about the United States’ successful break from the UK 230 some years ago. Oh well, maybe some day he’ll get over it like 99%+ of his fellow citizens.
Or, he’s equally pissed about our superior cost of living, for the same reason mentioned above.
Oh well, tough luck on both counts.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:08 am
dogger says:
in that case jimmy
yo mama so fat even dora couldnt explore her
August 10th, 2007 at 2:29 am
tarzan says:
I bang 2 rocks together to connect to the internet, so NO SPAM.
August 10th, 2007 at 11:42 am