{"title":"A Qualitative Analysis of Advance Fee Fraud E-mail Schemes","authors":"T. Holt, D. C. Graves","doi":"10.5281/ZENODO.18282","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Criminals utilize the Internet to perpetrate all manner of fraud, with the largest dollar losses attributed to advance fee fraud e-mail messages. These messages come from individuals who claim to need assistance moving a large sum of money out of their country. Individuals who respond to the messages often become victims of fraud and identity theft. Few criminologists have examined this type of fraud, thus this study explores the mechanisms employed by scammers through a qualitative analysis of 412 fraudulent e-mail messages. The findings demonstrate that multiple writing techniques are used to generate responses and information from victims. Half of all the messages also request that the recipient forward their personal information to the sender, thereby enabling identity theft. The implications of this study for law enforcement and computer security are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":46103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cyber Criminology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2007-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"63","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Cyber Criminology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.18282","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 63
Abstract
Criminals utilize the Internet to perpetrate all manner of fraud, with the largest dollar losses attributed to advance fee fraud e-mail messages. These messages come from individuals who claim to need assistance moving a large sum of money out of their country. Individuals who respond to the messages often become victims of fraud and identity theft. Few criminologists have examined this type of fraud, thus this study explores the mechanisms employed by scammers through a qualitative analysis of 412 fraudulent e-mail messages. The findings demonstrate that multiple writing techniques are used to generate responses and information from victims. Half of all the messages also request that the recipient forward their personal information to the sender, thereby enabling identity theft. The implications of this study for law enforcement and computer security are also discussed.
期刊介绍:
International Journal of Cyber Criminology (IJCC) is a peer reviewed online (open access) interdisciplinary journal published biannually and devoted to the study of cyber crime, cyber criminal behavior, cyber victims, cyber laws and cyber policy. IJCC is an unique Diamond open access, not for profit international journal, where the author(s) need not pay article processing charges / page charges and it is totally free for both the authors and the audience. IJCC will focus on all aspects of cyber/computer crime: Forms of Cyber Crime, Impact of cyber crimes in the real world, Policing Cyber space, International Perspectives of Cyber Crime, Developing cyber safety policy, Cyber Victims, Cyber Psychopathology, Geographical aspects of Cyber crime, Cyber offender behavior, cyber crime law, Cyber Pornography, Privacy & Anonymity on the Net, Internet Fraud and Identity Theft, Mobile Phone Safety, Human Factor of Cyber Crime and Cyber Security and Policy issues, Online Gambling, Copyright and Intellectual property Law. As the discipline of Cyber Criminology approaches the future, facing the dire need to document the literature in this rapidly changing area has become more important than ever before. The IJCC will be a nodal centre to develop and disseminate the knowledge of cyber crimes primarily from a social science perspective to the academic and lay world. The journal publishes theoretical, methodological, and applied papers, as well as book reviews. We do not publish highly technical cyber forensics / digital forensics papers and papers of descriptive / overview nature.