Dissecting Spear Phishing Emails for Older vs Young Adults: On the Interplay of Weapons of ...
summary
Field experiment runs for 21 days with 158 participants (99 young, 59 aged 65+), a browser extension records URLs and participants receive 21 counterbalanced, personalized phishing emails from 22 fake accounts that link to harmless static pages; susceptibility is a click. Key results: 43% clicked at least once, older women most vulnerable, 12% click multiple times; younger adults respond to scarcity, older adults to reciprocation; both ages respond to authority and legal cues; self-reported awareness is low, especially among older adults.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction to study
- 1:09Demographics of older adults
- 2:37Cognitive decline and trust
- 4:22Social engineering basics
- 7:16Weapons of influence explained
- 9:24Study design and setup
- 12:57Key findings on susceptibility
- 15:29Take-home message and future work
- 16:58Q&A session
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