Yahoo Yahoo: History, techniques and consequences

You know, I’ve always wondered where the term yahoo yahoo came from. I mean, it’s not like it’s a globally recognized term or one to be found in the dictionary. Yahoo, as every normal person knows it, is an American web services provider that provides a web portal, a search engine (Yahoo Search), mail services and others, although its throne has been usurped by Google.

But nevertheless, how did yahoo, a web service, become yahoo yahoo and a subliminal Nigerian citizen? Because only a liar would claim that they don’t know at least one person that dabbles in it. Some even flex with them because their lavish lifestyles mean they’re not at all shy about throwing money around for enjoyment; you hail them as blood, G! or boss man and proceed to chill with them even as you judge them in your heart for their sins.

Or better still, some even support their actions and claim that they’re just taking back from the white man what they took from us first. And Angel Gabriel is busy looking at you, wondering if he should add your name to the outgoing thunder that he’s about to send…

But we’re not here to debate the moral integrity of yahoo yahoo, or at least that’s not our main focus for today. Rather, we’re curious as to where it originated from, and why it is such a black hole of a craze that’s sucking in Nigerian youths left, right, and center.

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Table of Content hide 1Yahoo Yahoo: Etymology 2History of Yahoo Yahoo in Nigeria 3Yahoo Yahoo: Modus Operandi 4Benefits of Yahoo Yahoo 5Consequences of Yahoo Yahoo

Yahoo Yahoo: Etymology

As it turns out, the term yahoo yahoo traces its roots to the internet scams of the 1980s and 90s, and the word was coined due to the fact that the above-mentioned Yahoo services were the only means of communicating with clients globally.

Wait, why am I seeing some confused faces? Oh! (face-palms) Generation Zs. You lucky, lucky creatures. You live in a world that’s so connected, you have besties you’ve never seen before, yet you speak on a regular basis. Well, this may come as a shock to you, but once upon a time, there was no Facebook, Google or Instagram. The mere idea of mobile phones with the internet would be attributed to the effects of igbo. Gather around, and let me teach you a little about a time that will leave your internet-addicted brains shivering with horror.

During this dark age, if you wanted to do anything on the web, you needed to go to a cyber cafe, the first of which opened in the late 90s in Nigeria and gave the country its first taste of globalization. You went in, bought a ticket on an hourly basis, and did everything you wanted to do, from checking your Yahoo mail to browsing inane stuff or researching (for the nerds). But mostly for checking emails and communicating with friends and families all over the world.

And this is where the word yahoo yahoo originated from. Before Google came and stole the show with its search engine and mail service, Yahoo was the first to do all of these, and for which we thank God. Imagine them being called Google boys instead of Yahoo boys. Clients would die of laughter.

Hence, Yahoo Yahoo, or cybercrime as the rest of the world knows it, is generally defined as a criminal offense involving a computer as the weapon of the crime (hacking, phishing, spamming). A yahoo boy is anyone who interacts with another person with the intent of deceiving them and obtaining material things through shady means.

History of Yahoo Yahoo in Nigeria

As mentioned above, the dirty (or lucrative, depending on which side of the fence you’re standing on) business of duping others originated in Nigeria in the 80s, and not surprisingly, the government was to blame. Nigeria experienced a major economic decline during Shehu Shagari’s administration, and not even Buhari‘s takeover could stem the tide of unemployment. Not that he tried, though.

Anyways, this led to the postal fraud era, also known as 419 in homage to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud. Wow! Imagine a crime that takes its nickname from the law. What audacity.

But again, I digress. During this era, perpetrators, via posts, promised their marks, also known as clients, percentages of illicit riches that they were trying to smuggle out of Nigeria, and asked for sensitive financial details in return. In simple terms, they ‘required’ a foreign bank account to receive the wealth abroad, and most importantly, an advance fee to sort out ‘domestic issues’.

Okay, maybe those people from then really deserved to be swindled. I mean, I’m just saying.

With the onset of cybercafes in the 90s, scamming became so much easier. Imagine having been drinking water with a spoon, and then someone handed you a cup. Cafes provided access to Yahoo mail and a new way of communicating and ergo, a new way of making more money, and even better, they functioned around the clock, which meant that cybercriminals could operate without restrictions and work as long as they wished.

Suddenly, money was everywhere. Spending was a must. And soon a new generation of crime was born, the Yahoo Boys, named after the major weapon in their arsenal – Yahoo Mail. And Nigeria, after years of trying to be seen, was finally popular, but not for the right reasons. It’s like that kid whose parents are always complaining that he’s too shy, and then he goes and impregnates the landlady. And her daughter. And iya ologi.

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The Nigerian government did try to clamp down on them, and through surprise raids on cybercafes and sanctions that aimed to limit, or at least discourage their operations in these establishments, the number of cybercafe patronizers dwindled considerably. And between 2006 and 2009, Yahoo Yahoo took a hiatus. Alas, it wasn’t to last long.

The expansion of portable internet-enabled devices like first-generation smartphones and laptops to the Nigerian market in the early 2010s signaled the end of dependency on cybercafes and brought about a motile generation of cybercriminals. Known now as G boys who have thrown off the shackles of cybercafes and their static nature, they embraced the mobile internet, and bam! clients were back in trouble.

Yahoo Yahoo: Modus Operandi

With technology as advanced as it is now, Nigerian scammers have enlarged their scope. Gone are the days of having to communicate stressfully over computers that take five minutes to load a web page, or having to wait days for responses from their clients. With language translators and voice modifiers, they are able to understand and communicate in languages they have never learned. And this automatically means more victims for them.

The age-old ‘Nigerian Prince’ scam, which was one of the earliest iterations of their formats where they posed as a Nigerian prince who needed some help in securing his kingdom and promised to repay his benefactors in hundredfold afterward, has become the theme of popular jokes in the United States and around the world. However, variants of these internet fraud schemes still bedevil unsuspecting victims.

Now, I’m not a yahoo boy, but some of the formats used include signing up on paid dating sites like Match or Zoosk to find vulnerable clients. Free dating sites are apparently full of other scammers, most especially learners, so in order for Tinubu to avoid a situation where he finds himself chatting with Atiku, he uses paid sites instead.

After signing up, they then proceed to look for female clients; over fifty years old, especially those who live alone with their kids away at college, and they become their confidant and, subsequently, lover in a short period. They take care to make sure they’ve had no previous experiences with scammers, send them fake pictures and after gaining their trust, ask for money in the form of gift cards. Other times, they could find a false pretext to ask for their bank account details, including internet login details, and get their loader to load money into the account.

Oh, yeah, I should probably use this opportunity to introduce the members of the yahoo yahoo crime syndicate. Apart from the scammer who is the face of the organization, there are also other players in the game. Pickers are strategic middle-men contacts, sometimes residents in the countries where the client resides, who receive payments and physical items from victims and then transfer them to the scammers, in return for a percentage of the stolen funds.

Loaders, on the other hand, are masters at moving funds illegally with access gotten through phishing from one victim’s account to another victim’s account. And the term phishing means the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to convince people to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

After the loader has funneled the funds into the account, the victim is then asked to purchase a gift card with the money they’ve gotten, send it through a bitcoin ATM, or via money order to a picker.

There are also “employment” scams, where they get on a foreign college’s website and use an email extractor tool to extract emails of students, which they then “bomb” with adverts for part-time virtual workers. When one is hooked and has completed the task assigned to them, the scammer does a fake bank transfer or sends a bogus cheque that is in excess of the wage promised, then the client is asked to deduct their wage and remit the rest to the picker. The result of this is a negative balance for the victim when the bank’s system eventually discovers the fraudulent transaction.

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These are just some of the numerous formats that they use, and they are never shy about discussing it because, according to them, if e cast, boys go come up with new ones. Once again, me knowing all of these doesn’t mean I am a yahoo boy.

And as popular as cybercrime is, it is only third behind government corruption and narcotics trafficking as a global crime. But it is the only crime that effectively affects more individuals than either crime, with an estimated two out of every three people in the world having been a victim of cybercrime at least once in their lives.

Benefits of Yahoo Yahoo

Of course, the major benefit of yahoo yahoo is the money involved. By scamming people successfully, you have access to quick and easy money with little to no stress, which means you can spend big on a daily basis without the fear of going broke. In fact, you can also become a national icon, because, with your newfound wealth, people will start respecting you and singing your praises.

The sad truth of the matter is that nobody cares how you make your money, as long as you spend it on them. This is the reason why many top politicians who loot public funds for their selfish interests are still being celebrated every day, and yahoo yahoo money is no exception. The likes of Hushpuppi, Mompha, and Naira Marley who have come forward to publicly declare that they are Yahoo boys are being celebrated by Nigerians and even meet with the government. Naira Marley is now a household name in Nigeria and everyone wants to be a Marlian. So, being a yahoo boy brings you fame and honor.

And with this comes the opportunity to invest. Any sensible man with extra money at his disposal would invest it and hope that it turns in more money. With yahoo yahoo money, you can buy lands, houses, estates, jewellery, shares and hope that their value rises, so you can make more money. Alas, many of them do not think this far, probably because they didn’t work hard for it or they feel they can always make more.

Also, with your newfound money, women will be at your beck and call. Broke guys deserve no love, only the rich ones, they said, and since you’re getting funds on a steady basis, you have access to varieties of women, depending on how much you’re willing to spend. You can even import your taste from any part of the world, if you like, or tour the world to meet them. For yahoo boys, it’s women, more women and more women.

In addition to this, yahoo yahoo inadvertently leads to a reduction in the rate of physical crime. It is no news that people can do anything for money, legal or not, but the advent of cybercrime means that unemployed individuals see it as a less risky way of making money illegally, as opposed to armed robbery, kidnapping, and rituals.

Consequences of Yahoo Yahoo

Well, the first that comes to mind is the possibility of discovery by law enforcement agents and the penalty that it attracts, which is between three to seven years imprisonment. However, this may be more, based on the severity of the offense, amount involved, and other additional charges incurred if you would pardon the pun. Also, your mind will never be fully at rest, because you know that all it will take is the wrong attention turning toward you to land you in hot water.

In addition, there is this inexplicable connection between yahoo boys and igbo, (marijuana). Probably because they see themselves as rebels or champions against the injustice wrought on black people by the whites, most yahoo boys usually end up dabbling in drugs and other related vices.

Yahoo boys also create a stereotype that devalues the work of other internet users. The internet is now a major tool in most people’s work lives, and almost everyone has a laptop or a smartphone, but when people see you with a laptop, most especially the police, the first thing that comes to their mind is “this one dey do yahoo yahoo”. Those that also masquerade as online vendors make people lose trust in the legit vendors, and as a result, ruin business opportunities for them.

Yahoo boys also set a bad precedent for the coming generation, with the idea that you can make money without apparently working for it. In a country where graduates with outstanding results still have to toil and earn below minimum wage, yahoo yahoo will seem like a lucrative opportunity to the younger generation.

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