Catching Phish: Differences in the Trainability of Phishing Email Features
Dale Hunt. 2014

This study aimed to identify whether some features of phishing email are more trainable than others. Various email features were categorised into 3 groups; the Email Subject group, the Email Body group and the Universal Resource Locator (URL) group. Thirty-eight participants were tested on their ability to recognize these features of fraudulent email before and after taking part in a non-interactive training method. There was a significant increase in the ability to recognize fraudulent URL’s after receiving the training compared to the other 2 email feature groups. The research suggests that there may be a difference in the way people should be trained to detect fraudulent URL’s and other phishing email features. It also hints at how a simple, non-interactive approach of anti-phishing training may be beneficial when training users how to spot fraudulent URL’s, however further study is needed to confirm this