Nigerian Scammers

We're all seeing the rise of scam attacks. But have you ever wondered how they operate? False positives can cause problems for both technology and attackers. Attackers need to correctly identify targets to be profitable, and the number of targets decreases as the density of victims decreases. In the case of Nigerian scams, the attackers send emails to only the most gullible individuals to increase their chances of success.
False positives, or targets that yield nothing, must be balanced against false negatives, or viable targets that go un-attacked. The trade-off between these two types of errors is common across many fields and the relative costs of false positives and false negatives change depending on the problem specifics.