Proposal / Submission Type
Peer Reviewed Paper
Location
Richmond, Virginia
Start Date
28-5-2014 9:40 AM
Abstract
The goal of this research was to find the factors that influence a user’s ability to identify e-mail scams. It also aimed to understand user’s awareness regarding e-mail scams and actions that need to be taken if and when victimized. This study was conducted on a university campus with 163 participants. This study presented the participants with two scam e-mails and two legitimate e-mails and asked the participants to correctly identify these e-mails as scam or legitimate. The study focused on the ability of people to differentiate between scam and legitimate e-mails. The study attempted to determine factors that influence a user’s ability to successfully identify e-mail scams. The results indicated that frequency of e-mail usage was the only factor that influences e-mail scam detection. Only 1.7% of the respondents were able to identify all four e-mails correctly and 64.5% of the respondents were correctly able to identify three of the given four e-mails. Most users tended to delete/ignore the e-mail after receiving a scam e-mail. 59.3% respondents indicated that they were able to identify scam e-mail. Users also tended to trust reputed company names when trying to discern whether the particular e-mail was a scam or was legitimate. It should be noted that this paper is based on a subset of the entire dataset collected.
Keywords: E-mail scam, phishing, e-mail scam identification, awareness of e-mail scam, indicators used in detecting e-mails, phishing attacks, context-aware phishing
Scholarly Commons Citation
Datar, Tejashree D.; Cole, Kelly A.; and Rogers, Marcus K., "Awareness of Scam E-mails: An Exploratory Research Study" (2014). Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law. 12.
https://commons.erau.edu/adfsl/2014/wednesday/12
Included in
Aviation Safety and Security Commons, Computer Law Commons, Defense and Security Studies Commons, Forensic Science and Technology Commons, Information Security Commons, National Security Law Commons, OS and Networks Commons, Other Computer Sciences Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons
Awareness of Scam E-mails: An Exploratory Research Study
Richmond, Virginia
The goal of this research was to find the factors that influence a user’s ability to identify e-mail scams. It also aimed to understand user’s awareness regarding e-mail scams and actions that need to be taken if and when victimized. This study was conducted on a university campus with 163 participants. This study presented the participants with two scam e-mails and two legitimate e-mails and asked the participants to correctly identify these e-mails as scam or legitimate. The study focused on the ability of people to differentiate between scam and legitimate e-mails. The study attempted to determine factors that influence a user’s ability to successfully identify e-mail scams. The results indicated that frequency of e-mail usage was the only factor that influences e-mail scam detection. Only 1.7% of the respondents were able to identify all four e-mails correctly and 64.5% of the respondents were correctly able to identify three of the given four e-mails. Most users tended to delete/ignore the e-mail after receiving a scam e-mail. 59.3% respondents indicated that they were able to identify scam e-mail. Users also tended to trust reputed company names when trying to discern whether the particular e-mail was a scam or was legitimate. It should be noted that this paper is based on a subset of the entire dataset collected.
Keywords: E-mail scam, phishing, e-mail scam identification, awareness of e-mail scam, indicators used in detecting e-mails, phishing attacks, context-aware phishing
