ABSTRACT

The present study assessed how accurate adults are at detecting fraudulent e-mail activity. A total of 100 younger (18–26 years) and 96 older adults (60–90 years) categorized a series of e-mails as legitimate or fraudulent phishing schemes and self-reported their fraud experiences. Younger and older adults did not differ in accuracy rates when categorizing the e-mails (72%), but older adults used a “high-suspicion” strategy where they were more likely to mislabel a legitimate e-mail as fraudulent compared to younger adults. Younger adults were less likely to be targeted by fraud than older adults, but the groups were victimized at similar rates. Being a prior fraud victim negatively related to e-mail detection performance, but this differed across age groups and the extent of fraud experience. Together, these results provide insight into the relation between fraud experience and the ability to detect e-mail scams and can inform fraud prevention and education initiatives.

摘要

本研究评估了成年人在检测欺诈性电子邮件活动方面的准确度。共有 100 名年轻人（18-26 岁）和 96 名老年人（60-90 岁）将一系列电子邮件归类为合法或欺诈性网络钓鱼计划，并自我报告了他们的欺诈经历。在对电子邮件进行分类时，年轻人和老年人的准确率没有差异 (72%)，但老年人使用“高度怀疑”策略，与年轻人相比，他们更有可能将合法电子邮件错误地标记为欺诈. 与老年人相比，年轻人成为欺诈目标的可能性较小，但这些群体的受害率相似。作为先前的欺诈受害者与电子邮件检测性能呈负相关，但这因年龄组和欺诈经历的程度而异。一起，