On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 7:44 AM, Tony Wicks tonyw@tonywicks.com wrote:
I would like to add something, as a South African citizen. South Africa, is NOT part of Africa for that matter, it's a republic on it's own. It's almost like saying "Let's ban America, cause someone in Mexico spammed me". South Africa, which is on the 196/8 range does a LOT of business overseas in many countries, and I do want to warn that you could loose a lot of good business due to this practice.
Most of the fraud you experience could come from Nigeria, or one of the other central & western Africa countries. To ban a whole continent because of problems some countries cause could be problematic.
For that matter is China a different country from Russia, from Switzerland, even though they share the same land mass
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I need to put my 2c in here. I'm from New Zealand, we are a first world democratic country (the first in the worlds to give the vote to ALL adults I may mention). I have had the misfortune many of times of being unable to transact business because people from the US in their ignorance think, that New Zealand, isn't that part of Australia, which is right next to Asia, can't do business with those Asians, they will rip me off. Now sometimes people from the US have asked me why people in the other parts of the world get a bit annoyed at the "the only country that is free and true if the good old US of A" attitude, and well here you go as an example. Lets ban all of Africa because someone from Nigeria is a scammer. Africa is a pretty big place, and you know what, I've met many South Africans that are real nice (even employed a few). I've always been someone who defends America when people run it down, but it is a two way street, don't treat a whole country as criminals because you don't know the difference between one side of a continent from another, its kind of insulting you know. And some day you might well need the rest of us, you never know.
If a business only wants to do transaction with people in their own country, what is wrong with that? There is no international law that says they have to provide services or products to you because you live in a different country. Sometimes the lost revenue by not doing business outside your own country is better than having to deal with the possibility of fraud. Sometimes it is more of a hassle to deal with shipping, service and/or support issues with people from a different country and it's just not worth it.