A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SCAM MAILS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

This chapter gives an overview of the research, including its background, the problem it addresses, its scope and significance, and the questions it seeks to answer.

1.1 Background to the Study

Scam mails are a type of financial fraud. The sender dangles a large sum of money in front of the recipient and asks for bank details and other personal information in return. Such messages are a clear example of globalised communication. They originate in one part of the world, travel electronically to another, and are usually written in English or another world language. The best-known version is called Nigerian fraud, advance-fee fraud or the "419 scam", although not every such message is sent from Nigeria (Hiss, n.d.). In these messages the victim is asked to pay fees in advance before the promised funds can be released.

Research has identified recurring patterns in these messages. Typical stories involve huge sums that must be moved out of the sender's country with outside help. Common persuasive strategies include flattery, apology, intrigue, appeals to trust and religious feeling (Naksawat et al., 2016; Schaffer, 2012). Researchers have also documented linguistic traits that distinguish them. One study found that first-person singular pronouns appear about seven times more often in 419 emails than in other emails (Alli et al., 2018). Another found shared features such as non-native English errors and distinctive ways of addressing the reader and constructing the message (Digital forensic analysis of advance fee fraud emails, n.d.). Storytelling and the way senders construct identities are further strategies that scam messages rely on (Hiss, n.d.).

Despite the crudeness of many such messages and worldwide efforts to stop the senders, large numbers of people still fall victim and lose huge sums each year. Scammers tend to find a counter-measure for each technical safeguard that is introduced. Blocking scam mail from reaching computers is therefore perhaps a secondary goal. The main goal should be to educate internet users to recognise deceptive content and persuasive tricks so that they do not become the next victim. This aligns with calls to raise public awareness of the distinctive features of such emails (Alli et al., 2018).

Behind these crimes lies the fact that language, including email, can be used to deceive, harm or commit crime against others. Forensic linguistics is the field that studies the links between language, law and crime, and it is well suited to this problem. The field began to take shape with Svartvik's 1968 work on disputed statements, and it has since grown to cover areas such as authorship identification, plagiarism, statement analysis and legal translation (Exploring state-of-the-art software for forensic authorship identification, n.d.). Using various methods, forensic linguists identify the linguistic evidence that shows why a will is forged, why an emergency call is a hoax, why a text could not have come from a claimed author and, in this study, why a message could not have come from a bank. This is evidence that unsuspecting victims overlook.

This study starts from the argument that many Nigerians fall for scam messages because they cannot spot the falseness in them. It therefore examines such messages to reveal the linguistic features that set them apart from genuine bank messages.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Forensic linguistics has developed, and borrowed from other disciplines, many ways of analysing texts such as kidnap notes, hoax calls, emergency calls, witness statements, death threats, last statements of death-row inmates, court judgements and witness examinations. Scam mails, by contrast, have received little attention, even though they claim many victims every day.

This study analyses a selection of scam messages sent to customers of two Nigerian banks, Guaranty Trust Bank and Diamond Bank, using forensic linguistics. It investigates three questions. What linguistic properties of these messages reveal the sender's intent to deceive? How can bank customers distinguish them from genuine bank messages, which they can easily resemble? What do the messages reveal about the sociolinguistic background of their authors?

1.3 Scope of the Study

Forensic linguistics includes many concepts and methods, such as forensic phonetics, authorship comparison, authorship profiling, plagiarism detection and legal language analysis. These can be applied to many kinds of text, including kidnap and ransom demands, emergency and prank calls, plagiarised work, statements by death-row inmates, witness testimony and suicide notes. This study is limited to scam messages (emails and SMS) targeting customers of the two banks. It focuses on three methods: statement analysis, authorship comparison and authorship profiling.

1.4 Justification of the Study

The study is justified as forensic research because it examines how language is used in crime. Almost any piece of written or spoken language can become forensic evidence once it is involved in a legal or criminal matter, whether it is a will, a letter, a contract or a thesis. Scam mails clearly qualify.

The two banks were chosen because they are known as leading players in online banking in Nigeria. Most of their transactions take place online, which exposes their customers to a high rate of fraud.

1.5 Significance of the Study

Many forensic linguistic studies concentrate on phonetics, the language of the law, plagiarism and disputed authorship. Scam mails have attracted comparatively little scholarly attention (Digital forensic analysis of advance fee fraud emails, n.d.). This study is significant because it applies forensic linguistic concepts to a less explored kind of forensic text.

1.6 Aim and Objectives

The study aims to investigate the linguistic features of a selection of online scam messages that target Nigerian bank customers. Its objectives are:

1. To identify, through authorship comparison, linguistic evidence that distinguishes these messages from genuine bank messages.
2. To identify, through authorship profiling, the likely common sociolinguistic background of the senders.
3. To identify, through statement analysis, linguistic evidence of dishonesty and intent to deceive.

1.7 Research Questions

1. Which authorship features distinguish genuine bank messages from scam messages?
2. What can be said about the sociolinguistic background of the authors of the scam messages?
3. Which linguistic features indicate that these messages are not genuine?

1.8 Definition of Terms

1.8.1 Authorship comparison: This method, also called authorship attribution or identification, compares a text of unknown or disputed origin with the writings of a known author to decide whether the same person wrote both. Authorship analysis in general covers verifying whether two texts share an author, attributing a text to one of several candidates, and profiling an author (Roemling, n.d.). An analyst's conclusion may be that the two texts come from the same author, that they come from different authors, or that no conclusion can be drawn. The practice of questioning authorship is old, with disputes ranging from ancient texts to Shakespeare's plays. Today it extends to short criminal texts such as threats, ransom notes and scam messages, using both quantitative methods (including computational approaches) and qualitative approaches such as forensic stylistics.

1.8.2 Authorship profiling: Also known as sociolinguistic profiling, this method works from the idea that a person's language is shaped by social factors such as age, sex, education, race and social status. When no comparison text is available, it can still point to an author's likely background (Roemling, n.d.). It must not be confused with psychological or personality profiling. It uses only the linguistic evidence in the text to draw cautious conclusions about the author's social background, such as whether the author is educated and whether the author is a native or non-native user of the language.

1.8.3 Forensic statement analysis: This method began in psychology, where it was used to judge the truthfulness of witness accounts. Forensic linguists adapted it to examine how truthful a text is and how committed its author is to the account given. Unlike the psychological version, it does not rest on memory or fantasy. It looks at linguistic matters such as narrative structure, sequence of events and the way the author associates himself with the events described.

REFERENCES

Alli, R., Nicolaides, R., & Craig, R. (2018). Detecting advance fee fraud emails using self-referential pronouns: A preliminary analysis. Accounting Forum, 42(1), 78–85.

Digital forensic analysis of advance fee fraud emails. (n.d.). [Book chapter, IGI Global]. https://igi-global.com/chapter/digital-forensic-analysis-advance-fee/42787

Exploring state-of-the-art software for forensic authorship identification. (n.d.). https://revistas.um.es/ijes/article/download/49071/46941/209841

Hiss, F. (n.d.). Fraud and fairy tales: Storytelling and linguistic indexicals in scam e-mails. https://journals.linguistik.de/ijll/article/view/26/8

Naksawat, C., Akkakoson, S., & Loi, C. K. (2016). Persuasion strategies: Use of negative forces in scam e-mails. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 16(1), 1–17.

Roemling (n.d.). Forensic authorship analysis. CREST Security Review, 18, 18–19. https://crestresearch.ac.uk/download/4909/csr18_roemling_p18-19.pdf

Schaffer, D. (2012). The language of scam spams: Linguistic features of "Nigerian fraud" e-mails. ETC: A Review of General Semantics.