Do You Know This Phish? The Effect of Sender Familiarity on Email Authenticity Judgements.

Ben Harper. 2015

In a novel investigation, this study examined the effect of participant sender familiarity on the authenticity judgements for legitimate and phishing emails. Testing 30 Lancaster University undergraduates, 3 types of familiarity were compared: one was regular email exposure; the other two were familiarity and unfamiliarity without email exposure. The experimental training condition was simple feedback on email stimuli progress; encompassing an element of interactivity which would aid learning of conceptual knowledge. The alternative group was a minimal training condition which featured a basic government advice sheet. The main effect of familiarity and training condition were found to be unreliable (p > .05). The differences between scores before and after training (p < .05) revealed that training methods had increased user caution towards legitimate emails. This study further a) highlighted the dangers of phishing IQ tests in training users and b) explored the implications of purported sender familiarity on phishing emails suggesting that a measure of trust may be a better predictor for the effects of a familiar sender.