Internet users recognize attempted fraud less often than they think!
Those who rate their ability to reliably recognize phishing emails as very high are often particularly poor at correctly identifying the attempted data theft.
An experiment showed that even experienced Internet users are not immune to fraud. The study with 600 participants was led by Jingguo Wang from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Danger of overestimating yourself
Fraudsters' strategies are becoming increasingly sophisticated to gain access to the data or financial resources of unsuspecting users.
However, the confidence of email recipients also seems to be growing that they can see through the unfair requests for account details and other tricks.
However, when presented with real and fake emails from banks in random order, they were unable to distinguish between truth and deception more accurately than people with lower self-ratings.
"Very often people think they know more than they actually do - and that they are smarter than those who attempt the email scam," says co-author HR Rao of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
The fact that they feel safe offers increased opportunities for fraudsters. “They have already become very good at imitating the logos of well-known companies,” warns Rao.
Overcautious users are a problem
In a second study led by Wang, which has yet to be published, he looked more closely at the consequences of dealing with phishing emails.
“We found that many respondents viewed everything as a lie when they had to deal with phishing emails,” said Wang.
“It could simply make you decide to delete anything that is neither effective nor useful.”
Because if everything is seen as an attempt at fraud, banks, financial institutions, etc. will have a difficult time getting in touch with their customers.
press text/Marie-Thérèse Fleischer
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )