Names and Profiles of Swindlers in Recent Italian Poetry: Onomastic Implications of Spam, Scam and Phishing

Abstract

Spam, scams, and phishing are widespread phenomena in email inboxes and website pop-ups. This essay focuses on their impact on Italian literature, particularly their onomastic implications in recent poetry (2012-2024). Here I propose that the names chosen by scammers are intended to stimulate 
their victims’ expectations according to data provided by previous digital profiling. I then comparatively examine how those names hint to implicit narratives
within a literary frame, highlighting the crucial role played by the names of celebrities (included in spam messages to facilitate marketing profiling). I conclude
by identifying a literary shift in the role of names: the username has switched from identifying a character to delineating a risk factor, a threshold for accessing
sensitive data.