Forensic Investigation of Linguistic Sources of Electronic Scam Mail: A Statistical Language Modelling Approach

TitleForensic Investigation of Linguistic Sources of Electronic Scam Mail: A Statistical Language Modelling Approach
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2016
AuthorsOpesade AO, Tiamiyu MA, Adegbola T
Conference NameFirst Workshop on Text Analytics for Cybersecurity and Online Safety (TA-COS 2016)
PublisherEuropean Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Conference LocationPortorož, Slovenia
ISBN Number978-2-9517408-9-1
Abstract

Electronic handling of information is one of the defining technologies of the digital age. These same technologies have been exploited by unethical hands in what is now known as cybercrime. Cybercrime is of different types but of importance to the present study is the 419 Scam because it is generally (yet controversially) linked with a particular country - Nigeria. Previous research that attempted to unravel the controversy applied the Internet Protocol address tracing technique. The present study applied the statistical language modelling technique to investigate the propensity of Nigeria’s involvement in authoring these fraudulent mails. Using a hierarchical modelling approach proposed in the study, 28.85% of anonymous electronic scam mails were classified as being from Nigeria among four other countries. The study concluded that linguistic cues have potentials of being used for investigating transnational digital breaches and that electronic scam mail problem cannot be pinned down to Nigeria as believed generally, though Nigeria could be one of the countries that are prominent in authoring such mails.

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