Kathryn Parsons

Marcus Butavicius, Kathryn Parsons, Malcolm Pattinson et al.

We examined the influence of three social engineering strategies on users' judgments of how safe it is to click on a link in an email. The three strategies examined were authority, scarcity and social proof, and the emails were either genuine, phishing or spear-phishing. Of the three strategies, the use of authority was the most effective strategy in convincing users that a link in an email was safe. When detecting phishing and spear-phishing emails, users performed the worst when the emails used the authority principle and performed best when social proof was present. Overall, users struggled to distinguish between genuine and spear-phishing emails. Finally, users who were less impulsive in making decisions generally were less likely to judge a link as safe in the fraudulent emails. Implications for education and training are discussed.

Kathryn Parsons, Marcus Butavicius, Malcolm Pattinson et al.

This paper examines the cues that typically differentiate phishing emails from genuine emails. The research is conducted in two stages. In the first stage, we identify the cues that actually differentiate between phishing and genuine emails. These are the consistency and personalisation of the message, the perceived legitimacy of links and sender, and the presence of spelling or grammatical irregularities. In the second stage, we identify the cues that participants use to differentiate between phishing and genuine emails. This revealed that participants often use cues that are not good indicators of whether an email is phishing or genuine. This includes the presence of legal disclaimers, the quality of visual presentation, and the positive consequences emphasised in the email. This study has implications for education and training and provides a basis for the design and development of targeted and more relevant training and risk communication strategies.