Is This Phishing? Older Age Is Associated With Greater Difficulty Discriminating Between Safe and Malicious Emails

A systematic review and meta-analysis of age-related differences in trust

Matthew D Grilli, Katelyn S McVeigh, Ziad M Hakim, Aubrey A Wank, Sarah J Getz, Bonnie E Levin, Natalie C Ebner, Robert C Wilson and Derek Isaacowitz

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2021, vol. 76, issue 9, 1711-1715

Abstract: ObjectivesAs our social worlds become increasingly digitally connected, so too has concern about older adults falling victim to “phishing” emails, which attempt to deceive a person into identity theft and fraud. In the present study, we investigated whether older age is associated with differences in perceived suspiciousness of phishing emails.MethodsSixty-five cognitively normal middle-aged to older adults rated a series of genuine and phishing emails on a scale from definitely safe to definitely suspicious.ResultsAlthough older age was not related to a shift in overall perception of email safety, older age was related to worse discrimination between genuine and phishing emails, according to perceived suspiciousness.DiscussionThese findings suggest that cognitively normal older adults may be at particular risk for online fraud because of an age-associated reduction in their sensitivity to the credibility of emails.

Keywords: Aging; Cybersecurity; Decision making; Online scams (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbaa228 (application/pdf)
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:oup:geronb:v:76:y:2021:i:9:p:1711-1715.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().