AllThingsD » Nigeria

Suit Claims AT&T Billed U.S. for Nigerian Scam

Anton Troianovski and Brett Kendall — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:24:34 +0000

On April 6, 2010, an AT&T Inc. senior product manager allegedly e-mailed another top manager, trying to explain why call volume on the company’s government-subsidized service for hearing-impaired callers had dropped off the previous day.

“One reason might be that it was Easter Monday yesterday, which is celebrated in Nigeria,” the manager said, according to a lawsuit unveiled by the Department of Justice on Thursday.

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Nigeria Gives Huawei a Place to Prove Itself

Will Connors and Devon Maylie — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 10:53:54 +0000

Rocky You is determined to see his company’s $100 Chinese-made smartphone catch on in Nigeria, so he visits crowded Lagos shopping malls every few days to make his case directly to the sales clerks at cellphone shops and electronics stores.

“People making $2,000 or less a month,” says Mr. You, a 28-year-old senior account manager for Huawei Technologies Co., “those are the people we want to reach.”

While Huawei is one of the world’s biggest makers of telecommunications gear for service providers, the company only recently started selling consumer products such as smartphones and computer tablets. That has put the Chinese company at a disadvantage against big-name rivals, especially in established markets.

Nigeria holds promise. Pushed by a burgeoning middle class, cellphone usage is surging across Africa. Over half of the continent’s one billion people have cellphones. And in Nigeria, more than 90 million people have cellphones, up from less than a million 10 years ago, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, said in a recent speech.

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Start-Up Hopes to Stop Phishing With Certified Email

Ben Worthen — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:00:09 +0000

The number and sophistication of phishing attacks–scam emails that appear to be from the IRS or a Nigerian prince–has made it difficult for banks and other businesses to use email to communicate with customers. In an effort to reclaim the channel, several financial institutions and email providers are working with a startup to implement an authentication service for electronic messages.

The startup, eCert, confirms that an email is from the company it says it’s from. The company maintains a list of every server that participating organizations send emails from and shares the information with Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO), which operate popular email services. If a server isn’t on the list, messages from it don’t get through. The company also has other ways of testing an email’s authenticity, as well.

“We can now verify that a message came from a domain,” says Kelly Wanser, eCert’s CEO.

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Request for Urgent Business Pact: I Am Prince Steve Ballmer of the Republic of Redmond

John Paczkowski — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:19:13 +0000

According to a study conducted by the International Data Corporation and commissioned by Microsoft, the software giant contributes quite a lot to Nigeria’s economy. In fact, for every dollar that Microsoft earns in 2007, companies working with Microsoft in Nigeria will earn $11.

So really, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the Nigerian government, after agreeing to install Mandriva Linux on 17,000 Intel-powered Classmate PCs, has decided to install Microsoft Windows instead. Anyone, except perhaps Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon who, in a blistering open letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, accused the company of masterminding the Nigerian government’s switch to Windows.

… We closed the deal, we got the order, we qualified the software, we got the machine shipped. In other words, we did our job. I understand the machines are being delivered right now.

“And then, today, we hear from the customer a totally different story: “We shall pay for the Mandriva Software as agreed, but we shall replace it by Windows afterward.

“Wow! I’m impressed, Steve! What have you done for these guys to change their mind like this? It’s pretty clear to me, and it will be clear to everyone. How do you call what you just did Steve, in the place where you live? In my place, they give it various names, I’m sure you know them.

“Hey Steve, how do you feel looking at yourself in the mirror in the morning?”

Likely, quite a bit better than Bancilhon, I imagine.