Can adults discriminate between fraudulent and legitimate e-mails? Examining the role of age and prior fraud experience.

Abstract

The present study assessed how accurate adults are at detecting fraudulent e-mail activity. A total of 100 younger (18-26 years) and 96 older adults (60-90 years) categorized a series of e-mails as legitimate or fraudulent phishing schemes and self-reported their fraud experiences. Younger and older adults did not differ in accuracy rates when categorizing the e-mails (72%), but older adults used a "high-suspicion" strategy where they were more likely to mislabel a legitimate e-mail as fraudulent compared to younger adults. Younger adults were less likely to be targeted by fraud than older adults, but the groups were victimized at similar rates. Being a prior fraud victim negatively related to e-mail detection performance, but this differed across age groups and the extent of fraud experience. Together, these results provide insight into the relation between fraud experience and the ability to detect e-mail scams and can inform fraud prevention and education initiatives.