“Your account has been compromised”: exploring emotional triggers in scam emails

Abstract/Summary

Scam emails are a significant threat to online security, exploiting individuals’ vulnerabilities through emotional manipulation. This study explores emotional triggers in a corpus of scam emails (n = 371) compiled from ten genuine email accounts over a period of five years (2018-2023). Using Robinson’s (2008) taxonomy of basic emotions, the positive and negative emotional content and triggers were identified and analyzed. The findings revealed that an overwhelming majority of the emails alluded to negative emotions (n = 252) suggesting a clear scammer strategy in stimulating negativity to achieve fraudulent objectives. Conversely, the emails that evoked positive emotions (n = 119) seemed to create a false sense of trust, sociability and gratitude. In addition, many scam emails employed various combinations of emotional triggers to manipulate recipients. This study sheds light on the intersection between emotions and discourse pragmatics and highlights the affective dimensions of discourse in email communication.