Linguistic Cues of Deception in Malaysian Online Investment Scams' Promotional Materials (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2021
Over the last few years, there are growing concerns over the astronomical increase of reported cases of illegal internet investment schemes in Malaysia. Although the Central Bank of Malaysia (CBM) regulates and supervises financial institutions in order to combat illegal investment scheme through Financial Services Act 2013 (FSA 2013) and Islamic Financial Services Act 2013 (IFSA 2013), they do not protect the consumers should they choose to deal with the illegal financial service providers. The large financial losses have a negative impact fiscally on investors' socioeconomic. Hence, this study is proposed to analyse Malaysian illegal internet investment scammers' language properties to provide cyber defense for the public. Using Zhang and Wildermuth's (2009) content analysis process, this study intends to examine the linguistic strategies used by scammers in their websites to deceive their targets. This study will focus on several websites identified by CBM as the primary data source. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with personnel from relevant government agencies. For triangulation purposes, individuals who have experienced investing and willing to share their experiences and data will be interviewed. All data will be coded and categorised, and emergent themes will be presented to answer research questions. With great hope, this study's results will help provide comprehensive public education about these scams' linguistics strategies as a strong defense against them. The results may also help the authorities develop better crime prevention methods and contribute to the criminal justice system in presenting more significant linguistic evidence in the court of law.
The Journal of English Studies, 2011
The term 'spam' addresses unsolicited emails sent in bulk; therefore, the term 'financial fraud spam' refers to unwanted bulk emails in which different tricks and techniques are employed to swindle money from the recipients. Estimates show that more than 80% of worldwide email traffic in 2011 was spam. It should be noted that while the number of daily spam emails in 2002 was 2.4 billion, this number rose to 200 billion spam emails in 2011. Considering the incurred cost of spam emails, finding effective ways for identifying spam emails may help decrease the cost to a great extent. It must be borne in mind that the generators of the financial fraud spam emails employ intricate persuasive strategies that make their stories believable to the readers. In an attempt to unravel some of these persuasive strategies, the present paper focuses on the use of presupposition, personalization, and lexical choice that are frequently used by the generators of the financial fraud spam emails. The results of the analysis showed that the above mentioned persuasive strategies were widely used in the text of financial fraud spam emails. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that persuasive lexical devices were used throughout the spam emails, including the email addresses. In terms of personalization and presupposition, the study showed that all parts of the spam emails, except the address section, were subjected to the use of these persuasive strategies.
Linguistic Deception of Chinese Cyber Fraudsters
3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2017
Cybercrimes are on the increase in China and ‘QQ’, an instant messenger platform, is frequently exploited for these crimes. Fraudsters manipulate language to deceive users into revealing their bank accounts or depositing sums in the cheats’ accounts. Employing the theoretical framework that includes Speech Act Theory and Politeness Theory, the researchers attempted to identify the strategies used by such fraudsters. The subjects of this study included 50 interlocutors who had already chatted with different online cheats and had a record of their conversations. The data were collected and analysed on the basis of the type of discourse themes displayed. Findings indicated that the chats displayed various themes like Business Invitation, Money Transfer, Account Hacking and Online Shopping. In addition, the three levels of speech acts of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary were discernible and most fraudsters did not bother to address face threatening acts. In comparison to hoax email writers, the fraudsters in instant communication regularly came across as more aggressive and imperative, but then softened their diction if victims were not interested to chat with them in real time. The implications of this study lie in the possibility of developing a model for fraudster or cheat discourse structure, thus alerting QQ users in particular of such crimes. Other online instant messenger users will also benefit from this study. Better informed of how cheats manipulate language to present untruth as truth and be alerted of the modus operandi involved in online deception, victims can be saved and the crime curbed. The issue of the victim’s vulnerability and the reasons behind it certainly deserve further linguistic and metalinguistic scrutiny.
The study of online romance scam is still at its infancy in Malaysia, despite the increase in the number of reported cases in this country. This research primarily aims to identify the steps and strategies involved in the online romance scam in Malaysia. Apart from that, it also aims to identify the pattern of deceptive language used in online romance scam in Malaysia through a comprehensive linguistic analysis of actual online conversations between scammers and victims. The empirical investigation of this research focuses on the language strategies used by scammers as a modus operando in deceiving their targets. With the help of the Malaysian Police Department, a database of romance scam cases was gathered and established. From the database, 30 sets of online communication between scammers and 30 Malaysian victims were selected and analysed using content analysis method. One of the aspects involved in data analysis was scammers' linguistic styles and patterns in manipulating their targets. This was analysed using Brown and Levinson Politeness Model as well as Whitty's Scammers Persuasive Techniques Model. The findings indicate a common linguistic pattern and style of conversation used by online scammers in persuading and deceiving their victims.
Fraud and Fairy Tales: Storytelling and Linguistic Indexicals in Scam E-mails
International Journal of Literary Linguistics, 2015
Most of us receive numerous spam e-mails, texts that in one or the other way try to convince us to engage in the transaction of enormous sums of money, promising enormous benefits. In reality, such scam e-mails are fraudulent attempts to swindle money from unsuspecting Internet users. Language, its social contexts, and the composition of texts play a crucial role in the scammers’ strategies to approach their victims. This article uncovers and discusses some of the linguistic strategies by which scammers try to shape a sense of identity and mutual relationship – in the face of virtual anonymity –, and to involve their readers personally. In their attempts to get the recipients involved, scammers combine cultural indexicals, interactional roles, and narrative strategies. The analysis distinguishes three different narrative strategies in scam e-mails: Based on first, second, and third person stories, scammers establish links with the recipients by combining fictional content with real-...
Linguistic Manipulation by Scammer as Cyber Crime: Viewed from Law and Education
Proceedings from the 1st International Conference on Law and Human Rights, ICLHR 2021, 14-15 April 2021, Jakarta, Indonesia, 2021
Cybercrime on emails or other social media is now drawing careful attention to the academics and police. Such issue is not new to the police but it might be new to academics. Many people might be easily cheated on the language used by the scammer when they are influenced by the scammers' manipulation language. This study employed a qualitative analysis. a content analysis is used as the method of the study. The result of the study is that the language used by the scammer is very much convincing. The scammers persuaded and manipulated the language to deceive their victims. It is highly suggested that academics should also pay a careful attention and educate other people by spreading a clear information to their students or doing socialization to the society in community service program. This way can also help the police to reveal the crime spread on cyber world.
International journal of academic research in business & social sciences, 2023
The emergence of e-commerce or online shopping platform has opened-up multiple opportunities for business owners to multiply their earnings. At the same time, this enables consumers to shop conveniently compared to the traditional shopping method, especially during the Covid19 pandemic. In Malaysia, the development opens consumers to the novel threat of fraud and scams, especially on social media and other online shopping platforms such as Shopee, Lazada and Facebook Marketplace. Due to the alarming rise in scams worldwide and the elusive methods offenders use, law enforcement agencies have turned to public education and awareness programs to reduce the number of scam victims. Thus, this study aims to identify authors' attributes in e-commerce scams' promotional contents and narratives to examine the scammers' persuasive strategies to deceive their victims. Specifically, the study intends to look at the linguistic features in authorship attribution, including lexical, syntactic, semantic, structural, and content-specific features of the corpus. Although linguistic analysis has never been used in cybersecurity, learning the language used by scammers could help researchers collect more comprehensive empirical data and educate the public about this common phenomenon.
Discourse Pattern, Contexts and Pragmatic Strategies of Selected Fraud Spam
The thrust of this paper is the pragmatic investigation of fraud spam, the unwanted emails containing the strategic use of language with the intention to swindle money from the recipients. Sixty (60) English medium email samples were collected from the author of the present paper's email spam between July 2017 and February 2018 in Nigeria. These were analysed using Halliday and Hasan's Generic Structure Potential and an aspect of Fetzer's cognitive context model. The study identified six discourse patterns: salutation, discourse initiation, enticing information, mild conscription into business, request and subscription; orienting to contexts of business and religion; manifesting pragmatic strategies of adversatives, evocation of business idea, evocation of religious affinity and evocation of messianic figure. The study, therefore, concludes that cyber-fraudsters deploy similarly familiar patterns and contexts evincing strategic persuasive language to defraud their prospective victims. Significantly, the study complements existing literature on fraud discourse in linguistic scholarship.
Devices of Textual Illusion: Victimization in Romance Scam E-Letters
Research in Language, 2020
Virtual communication transcends national boundaries and allows establishing and maintaining contacts efficiently. However, it also poses threats to integrity and ethical online conduct. In particular, dating sites and unsolicited e-messages often prey on vulnerable unsuspecting people with an intention to extort financial means. The internet is a medium where anonymity, disguise and fraud are widespread. Scammers use linguopsychological devices to lure potential victims into the scam scenario. Devices were screened and categorized from seven letter-sets (each set containing 18–23 letters) including correspondence with scammers. The sets revealed similar lexical and macrostructural patterns common in e-romance scam. Frequently employed devices appeared to signal scammers’ malicious intents often potentially detrimental to a victim. Persuasion, flattering, appeal to trust, core human drives such as bonding, greed, altruism are among the most popular scammers’ devices. The method of s...
Text, lies and electronic bait: An analysis of email fraud and the decisions of the unsuspecting
Discourse & Communication, 2011
Despite the preponderance of advance fee fraud scams, many in society still fall victim to such con games. The internet has provided scammers with an opportunity to perpetrate fraud on a global scale. In particular, the 419 email scam has become a popular tool used by scammers to entice their victims. Our purpose is to establish rhetorical moves that exist in these 419 messages, and then analyze the intention of the scammers behind each move – a scam must shake the potential victim out of the status quo behavior. In other words, how is the content of particular moves able to facilitate change in a potential victim’s mind, goading him or her to unwise action? After examining each move in light of features considered necessary for mind change, it was determined that the scammers are most concerned about building solidarity with the mark and playing to a mark’s egocentrism, both of which keep the mark from making well-informed decisions.