Factors Affecting Internet Users’ Effectiveness to Detect Phishing

Maria Smeou (), Maria Perifanou () and Anastasios A. Economides
Additional contact information
Maria Smeou: Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
Maria Perifanou: ��SMILE Lab, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
Anastasios A. Economides: ��Department of Economics and SMILE lab, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM), 2025, vol. 24, issue 04, 1-37

Abstract: Phishers target Internet users and send them phishing emails or create phishing websites to deceive victims and extract financial gains. This study investigated the factors that affect Internet users in phishing detection. The responses of 252 participants to an online survey were collected and analysed. Participants were mostly careful when a website requested urgent action, its content had errors, or an email message asked recipients to give personal information or click a suspicious link. They believed that education about phishing, email filtering software, and connecting directly to the official website, and not through a link, were the best practices. They also stated that they could learn how to easily detect phishing attempts and evaluate whether an email was spam, advertising, phishing, or a scam. It was also found that the creation of blacklists and whitelists did not provide sufficient protection against phishing, active warnings were more effective than passive warnings, and users were receiving phishing emails that escaped email filtering and antivirus software. Further statistical analysis of their responses revealed that there was a moderate positive correlation between each of the variables Self-Efficacy in Phishing Detection, Information Evaluation Skills, E-Banking Phishing Detection Skills with Phishing Detection Effectiveness. Finally, it was found that the Facilitating Conditions for Phishing Detection, E-Banking Phishing Detection Skills, and E-Mail Phishing Detection Skills influenced Phishing Detection Effectiveness.

Keywords: Cyber security; fake bank; phishing attacks; phishing email; phishing website; scam site (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219649225500297
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:jikmxx:v:24:y:2025:i:04:n:s0219649225500297

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219649225500297

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM) is currently edited by Professor Suliman Hawamdeh

More articles in Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().