Is It Spam or Ham? Testing Asynchronous CMC Deception Detection Theory

摘要

This paper presents two empirical evaluations of Asynchronous CMC Deception Detection Theory (ACDDT) in the CMC genres of legitimate and spam e-mail. The ACDDT theorizes that deception detection in asynchronous text is indicated by the presence of the constructs of concealment, normality, and isolation. The ACDDT was tested on two common types of e-mail that attempt to deceive the reader/recipient, e-mail that attempted to steal the recipient's personal identification information and e-mail that attempted to steal the recipient's money. The e-mail was clustered using the text mining. The terms representing the clusters were analyzed using text analysis. The constructs developed from the text analysis provided measures of the hypotheses. Both tests confirmed that ACDDT provides a theoretical base for detection of deception in e-mail. The contributions of this work are support for the ACDDT and a development of a new and unique method of detecting fraudulent e-mail.