Sixteen Years of Phishing User Studies: What Have We Learned?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Baki, Shahryar, Verma, Rakesh
Format: Preprint
Published: 2021
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author Baki, Shahryar
Verma, Rakesh
author_facet Baki, Shahryar
Verma, Rakesh
contents Several previous studies have investigated user susceptibility to phishing attacks. A thorough meta-analysis or systematic review is required to gain a better understanding of these findings and to assess the strength of evidence for phishing susceptibility of a subpopulation, e.g., older users. We aim to determine whether an effect exists; another aim is to determine whether the effect is positive or negative and to obtain a single summary estimate of the effect. OBJECTIVES: We systematically review the results of previous user studies on phishing susceptibility and conduct a meta-analysis. METHOD: We searched four online databases for English studies on phishing. We included all user studies in phishing detection and prevention, whether they proposed new training techniques or analyzed users' vulnerability. FINDINGS: A careful analysis reveals some discrepancies between the findings. More than half of the studies that analyzed the effect of age reported no statistically significant relationship between age and users' performance. Some studies reported older people performed better while some reported the opposite. A similar finding holds for the gender difference. The meta-analysis shows: 1) a significant relationship between participants' age and their susceptibility 2) females are more susceptible than males 3) users training significantly improves their detection ability
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2109_04661
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sixteen Years of Phishing User Studies: What Have We Learned?
Baki, Shahryar
Verma, Rakesh
Cryptography and Security
Human-Computer Interaction
Several previous studies have investigated user susceptibility to phishing attacks. A thorough meta-analysis or systematic review is required to gain a better understanding of these findings and to assess the strength of evidence for phishing susceptibility of a subpopulation, e.g., older users. We aim to determine whether an effect exists; another aim is to determine whether the effect is positive or negative and to obtain a single summary estimate of the effect. OBJECTIVES: We systematically review the results of previous user studies on phishing susceptibility and conduct a meta-analysis. METHOD: We searched four online databases for English studies on phishing. We included all user studies in phishing detection and prevention, whether they proposed new training techniques or analyzed users' vulnerability. FINDINGS: A careful analysis reveals some discrepancies between the findings. More than half of the studies that analyzed the effect of age reported no statistically significant relationship between age and users' performance. Some studies reported older people performed better while some reported the opposite. A similar finding holds for the gender difference. The meta-analysis shows: 1) a significant relationship between participants' age and their susceptibility 2) females are more susceptible than males 3) users training significantly improves their detection ability
title Sixteen Years of Phishing User Studies: What Have We Learned?
topic Cryptography and Security
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.04661