The Human Factor in Mobile Phishing
Rasha Salah El-Din, Paul A. Cairns, John A. Clark · Advances in digital crime, forensics, and cyber terrorism book series · 2015
Phishing is the use of electronic media, like emails and mobile text messages, to fraudulently elicit private information or obtain money under false pretence. Though there is considerable interest in phishing as a security problem, there is little previous research from the human factors perspective and in particular very little empirical support for what makes mobile phishing effective or successful and therefore how best to defend people from it. This chapter describes some of the research conducted from the field of traditional phishing that already embraces the effect of human factors on phishing vulnerability. The limited amount of research exploiting mobile phishing is discussed; including a review of our previous work involving evaluating mobile users' strategies for managing mobile phishing attacks. By reflecting on how these subjects investigate the threat of phishing, this chapter aims to show that empirical research on mobile phishing is scarce and falling behind in terms of identifying underlying psychological processes and inspire future research in this area.