Too Good to Be True: A Discourse Analysis of the Australian Online Scam Prevention Website

The exponential growth of information technology has brought about revolutionary changes in commerce, banking, communications and human relationships. At the same time, though, the Internet has also offered new opportunities for less scrupulous subjects to pursue their personal interests by taking advantage of others. In particular, online scams have become an extremely common phenomenon: fraudsters make use of web-mediated communications in the form of emails, social networks, mobile apps, and so on to trick their victims into giving away personal information or money. Such cybercrimes may be pursued for committing different kinds of offences, such as those arising from misleading and deceptive conduct under consumer protection laws, fraud laws and other criminal laws. Yet, it is extremely difficult for government agencies to identify scammers and take action against them, especially considering that scammers may be based in a foreign country. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) reports that nearly $83m (€55m) was lost to scams in 2016, with online scams outnumbering phone-based frauds. Scammers may persuade their victims through deceptive narratives, misleading a target audience into believing false information. Police forces and regulators are continuously required to learn about the new and devious methods scammers use to help web users avoid frauds. Run by the ACCC, the ScamWatch platform provides information to online users, consumers and small businesses about how to recognise, avoid and report scams. Based on this, the study considers the resources provided on ScamWatch to support web users and offer legal aid. In particular, it focuses on the popularisation methods enacted by the ACCC to instruct users about techniques, approach and methods used by scammers. In addition, the analysis takes a genre perspective to examine the ACCC guidelines and reveals the textual realizations (e.g. philanthropic fundraising, love message) used alongside deceptive features exploited by fraudsters.