SMILE - Smart eMaIl Link Domain Extractor
Mattia Mossano, Benjamin Berens, Philip Heller, Christopher Beckmann, Lukas Aldag, Peter B. Mayer, Melanie Volkamer · Lecture notes in computer science · 2022
Abstract Phishing over email continues to be a significant threat, as such messages still end up in users’ inboxes. Several studies showed that users rarely check the URL in the statusbar before clicking a link and that they have difficulties reading URLs. To support users, we propose SMILE (Smart eMaIl Link domain Extractor), a novel approach that provides the relevant information to distinguish between legitimate and phishing emails checking the links in them. Once applied, SMILE modifies all links in an email to contain the domain and top-level-domain of the URL behind them, e.g., “Click here” in an legitimate Amazon email is modified to “Click here [amazon.com]”.