Though more properly titled as addressing email scams specifically, this up-to-date book zeroes in on the more recent phenomenon of lower volume, targeted emails. Correctly pointing out that messaging deception is probably as old as written communications, eight contributors, six content chapters, four case studies, and an introduction and conclusion all work coherently to present thoughtful information.

Part 1 has two chapters, on identifying trends and predicting trends in email scamming. Part 2 is a compelling chapter on social persuasion, outlining the various ways in which the targets (individuals) can be convinced to willingly participate.

Part 3 focuses on the many methods to select suspect emails, in other words, how to file email. I found the chapter on semantic analysis of messages most interesting, if the most intrusive and potentially prone to false positives.

Part 4 contains the book’s four case studies, which focus on sales, rentals, romances, and businesses. While I expected the case on romance to be the most titillating and perhaps sad, the approach feels to me somewhat bereft of human tragedy--“real people” never feel deep to me.

However, this text is not a novel. It is directed at network administrators, security researchers, best policy practitioners, and law enforcers. The competition to this book is thin (for example, [1,2]). It is not a fully comprehensive text, and does not directly cover prevalent industry approaches (namely domainkeys identified email (DKIM) and sender policy framework (SPF)), nor is it a full guide to the technologies that might be applicable. The references cited are skimpy, and the two-page index insufficient. For the intended audiences, it is a decent high-level overview that is worth reading.

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