Internet Scams an Senegal

Over the past week there's been a crack-down on internet scammers in Senegal. Especially Nigerians using the internet for scamming in Dakar. Unfortunately this has had knock-on effects. The police have been particularly interested in those records written in English and have been breaking into accounts and demanding access to anything deemed suspicious (which, for the most part seems to be anything not written in French.

This crack-down had led many internet cafes to close for the duration. Of course, we all applaud attempts to defeat internet fraud (see here for a list and break-down of the most prevalent internet frauds and scams) but, as always there are unforeseen consequences. As my wife lives with the Liberian community of Dakar, and most of the local internet cafes cater for Liberians (who predominantly write in English) most have been closed during this time as they don't want to be raided by the police. Even those internet cafes that are open are shunned by the Liberians as they do not want their emails or internet activities examined by the police.

My wife was saying that there have been many arrests and quite a few of those were of quite innocent internet users. There seems to be a culture of fear pervading internet usage and my wife's been trying to access me via a friend's laptop, rather than using the internet cafe as she normally would. This has made communication between us rather stilted to say the least. The mobile system where my wife is is flaky to say the least so the internet is the only sure means of communication. And with VoiP being offered as well as video conferencing the internet is actually a good and sensible means of communication.

Like everything you only notice it when it's gone and the lack of internet connection for the past week has had a real profound influence on our lives. Despite being so far away, the internet did bring us much closer together and now that's been taken away from us with some significant consequences for both of us. It's also affected the schools and children's education as anyone with English based communications is running scared at the moment. It just seems like one further problem affecting the Liberian refugee community.

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