Credentials For Individuals: Fill & Download for Free

Payoff investment.There are two stages to a phishing (or 419) campaign, one low-investment and one high-investment.The low-investment stage is sending out the emails. You load a database of email addresses and push a button. Click! Done.The high-investment phase is validating and then laundering the stolen credentials (for phishing) or talking to the marks and scamming them out of money (for 419 frauds).At this point, you’re putting quite a lot of effort into each person. In order to return a profit, you must maximize the return for each individual unit of effort—that is, for each credential stolen or each mark scammed.Phishers and 419ers have been doing this for decades, and have learned through trial and error how to minmax the reward for the high-investment stage of the scam.It turns out you can only maximize your return on investment if you target the stupidest, most starkly gullible, most absolutely credulous people.People of average intelligence and skepticism are poor targets. They will type a password into the phish page, then say “wait, something’s not right” and change their password. They’ll talk to the 419er, then back out as soon as it comes time to send money.The scammer can’t afford that. He needs to make sure the phish haul is as clean as possible and that the people he talks to are likely to send money. Because the second stage is high investment, it’s worth it to get fewer replies but make sure the people who do reply are more gullible.Phishers and 419ers will do things like deliberately put spelling errors in the phish emails or 419 emails, for the express purpose of getting less gullible marks not to respond.

Depends on what you mean by “valid”. If you want to use it as evidence that you've done something interesting, sure, it's no different from having been the captain of your local curling club, or whatever. But as an academic credential for which you can, say, get placement or credit, likely not. The latter doesn't seem to hold at many places even if you get a verified certificate, but that depends a lot on the individual institution. Still, it is an interesting way to demonstrate your interests and abilities.

When I add a credential for 1 answer, is it normal that it changes the credential of an old answer? How to apply a credential to one single answer?Credentials apply for topics, not for individual answers.Changing a credential for a topic will change it whenever one of your answers in that topic appears.