{"id":9507,"date":"2011-04-13T10:34:42","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T15:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=9507"},"modified":"2011-04-14T15:34:39","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T20:34:39","slug":"study-looks-at-who-gets-phished-by-internet-scammers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2011\/04\/study-looks-at-who-gets-phished-by-internet-scammers\/","title":{"rendered":"Study looks at who gets phished by Internet scammers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Everyone

Everyone is susceptible to a phishing attempt, says Teju Herath, shown here with a warning from Brock's ITS department about giving out user names and passwords.<\/p><\/div>\n

Being technologically savvy does not mean you are safe from email phishing attempts. In fact, the more active someone is online, the more likely they are to be targeted.<\/p>\n

Those are the findings of a recent study conducted by Teju Herath<\/a>, an assistant professor of Information Systems at Brock, as part of a team at University at Buffalo<\/a> (UB). The soon-to-be-published study found that the more email and online relationships you have, the more likely you are to receive a phishing attack.<\/p>\n

The team looked at a phishing attempt targeted at UB staff and students, some of whom handed over their user names and passwords. They found that the more active someone is in cyberspace, the more phishing attempts they\u2019ll receive, and the more email they get, the more likely they are to respond hurriedly and hand over personal information.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpam blockers are imperative to reduce the number of unnecessary emails individuals receive that could potentially clutter their information processing and judgment,\u201d Herath said.<\/p>\n

Phishing is particularly successful when the email appears to come from a relevant organization, such as the recipient\u2019s bank or the administration where the recipient works. The only real cure is awareness and keeping users mindful, Herath said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhishing awareness plays an important role,\u201d she said. \u201cJust because we have a high skill set in using the technology doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phishing is a process where emails appear to come from credible businesses \u2013 such as banks, charities or email providers \u2013 asking for the recipient\u2019s personal information like usernames, passwords, bank account information or credit card details. The information is then used for nefarious purposes.<\/p>\n

In addition to Herath, the research team included Arun Vishwanath and H. Raghav Rao from UB; Rui Chen from Ball State University, and Jingguo Wang from the University of Texas. Their findings will be published in the journal Decision Support Systems.<\/p>\n

The study also recommends using different email accounts for personal and business use.<\/p>\n

Phishing attempts only net information from three to five per cent of the users, Herath said. But that\u2019s enough to do damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf three per cent of account holders give out their information, that can have a large impact on an organization,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more active someone is online, the more likely they are to be targeted by a phishing attach, Teju Herath says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[3327,217],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9507"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9510,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9507\/revisions\/9510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}