On the Origins of Advance Fee Fraud Electronic Mails: A Technical Investigation Using Internet Protocol Address Tracers

One issue that is concerning to the web security community is the correct identification of the origins of advance fee fraud mails. This has serious implications for directing concerted efforts towards mitigating the malaise in the right direction. Although previous research (Cuckier et al, 2007, Gbenga, 2007; Igwe, 2007; Progame, 2007) opined that these mails originate mainly from Nigeria and other West African Countries, research is warranted using available tracking tools to validate previously held notions about the issue of advance fee e-fraud mails. We harvested in real-time aggregated advance fraud e-mails over a two year period using the sinkhole aggregation methodology as proposed by Abhinav et al (2008), Using freeware e-mail and internet protocol address tracers, we obtained results that deviates from the generally held believes about the origins of advance fee fraud e-mails. Our findings have implications for research on spam filtering and by extension web security