"The Genre of Scams"
by Gordon Byrd
Gordon ByrdGordon Byrd is a rhetorically conscious writer with a long career of reading/writing emails. Periodically, he writes articles for magazines as a hobby. Currently, he is enrolled as a doctoral student in ECU's Rhetoric, Writing, and Technical Communication program. Contents |
A Theory of Scams Email GenresInformation Security has become a hot-button issue in the age of the internet. Every business that has a web-based presence is guarded by digital sentinels. Their virtual vigil is scrutinized by the media and consumers. Equifax felt the painful backlash when an information security patch on their software went un-updated for two months. Countless articles about the leak and countless consumers affected illustrates the necessity of hacker-proof barriers, but even the strongest barrier needs to be updated and even the firmest firewall has a human link that will more-often-than-not be the root cause of the breach. A constant barrage of attacks will eventually find a weak-point and that point is exploited until it takes months of forensics to find the breach and assess the damage. A different security breach, both limited and pervasive, is the common scam email. Scam emails are a common barrage attack in the information age. People tightly guard their information, such as passwords, Social Security Numbers, and Bank account numbers, and yet it has become increasingly easy for criminals to steal this information and access private information. Recent stories of breaches of privacy have shown the magnitude of this problem. In the fall of 2014, hackers managed to gain access through phishing to celebrity accounts in the Apple Inc. iCloud (Chang and Winton, 2014). The situation resulted in multiple lawsuits and many embarrassing moments. Privacy and security are generally recognized as illusions now (Sanchez, 2015). Typically, security problems are blamed on out-dated software that hackers are able to easily slip by, but all too often the weakest link in the security chain is the human link (Mitnick, 2002, p. 3). Somehow a stranger can make an appeal through an email and this is enough to render our tightly woven security nets useless. Kevin Mitnick, a security consultant, says, “[p]eople have a tendency to comply when a request is made by a person in authority. When someone effectively poses as an authority, they will be able to persuade their target 95% of the time" (Mitnick, 2002, 247). The email, much more conveniently than a paper letter mailed through the post, can invade an unsuspecting victim’s home or office and have the victim surrender sensitive information by simply asking. Of course, the victim is not knowingly handing the information over to someone who will perpetrate identify theft. There is a front story and then a request that seems reasonable and necessary. The request comes from someone in desperate need and appeals to our pathos, say a Nigerian princess whose evil uncle wants to arrest her and take her inheritance. Or, the request is a response from someone selling the car you’ve inquired about on Craigslist, and the appeal is to our logos, because the only reasonable way for him to pay to deliver the car is for you to send a check beforehand. Another form of scam comes from a supposed authority figure, like the Information Technology department on the university campus. Ethos is used to persuade you to follow the link to update your personal information and change your password, since it has expired. Scammers have provided a plethora of examples of a scam email genre. Using one email, I would like to put forth a theory of scam genres, specifically the scam email. For this brief introduction to the scam genre, I will use genre criticism and analyze a scam email invoking ethos. I would like to demonstrate the elements of a scam email and the use of uptake. |