97% Internauts Can’t Recognize Phishing Emails Correctly Across the World

Information-age.com reported on 19th May, 2015 stating that an Intel Security, a renowned security firm, conducted a quiz which tests the knowledge of consumers about phishing emails and scams revealing a massive 97% people could not identify phishing emails designed to steal personal credentials from legitimate emails.

The survey presented ten emails collected by Intel Security and urged participants to identify phishing emails out of them which were designed to embezzle personal information and which were authentic.

The results reveal that out of 19,500 people from 144 countries tested, only 3% could identify all the examples accurately and 80% of all participants identified incorrectly at least one of the fake emails, enough to be victimized by a phishing email attack and exposing your valuable credentials like IDs, passwords or all details of your credit card.

In some cases, if you click the enclosed link in the email, you will spontaneously download malware into the device of the user. Once installed on your system cybercriminals can easily embezzle the credentials of victim without their awareness.

People in 35-44 year age group performed best across the world answering 68% questions correctly on an average. On average, women below the age of 18 and more than 55 year of age seemed to have the most difficulty in differentiating between genuine and phony emails as only 6 out of 10 messages could be identifies accurately. In general, males gave slightly more accurate answers with 67% accuracy rate than females with an average of 63% accuracy rate.

The US ranked 27th as the most accurate country among 140 countries with 68% Americans identifying phishing emails. Participants in Iowa performed best and North Dakota performed worst. France ranked first with Sweden, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain all filling rest of the top five position.

The rates of failure of these tests reveal that phishing techniques have become even more resounding and dangerous.

Digitaltrends.com published news on 13th May, 2015 quoting an advice of Gary Davis, Chief Consumer Evangelist of Intel Security as "You must review your email very carefully and look for clues like poor visuals and wrong grammar which may signify that the email was sent by a cybercriminal."

» SPAMfighter News - 5/29/2015