Social-psychological research on phishing has implicated ineffective cognitive processing as the key reason for individual victimization. Interventions have consequently focused on training individuals to better detect deceptive emails. Evidence, however, points to individuals sinking into patterns of email usage that within a short period of time results in an attenuation of the training effects. Thus, individual email habits appear to be another predictor of their phishing susceptibility. To comprehensively account for all these influences, we built a model that accounts for the cognitive, preconscious, and automatic processes that potentially leads to phishing-based deception. The resultant suspicion, cognition, and automaticity model (SCAM) was tested using two experimental studies in which participants were subjected to different types of emailbased phishing attacks.

Research on phishing has implicated users' heuristic processing as the reason why they fail to recognize deception cues and fall prey to phishing attacks. Other research on online behavior has found that the attributes of the medium activate heuristics that contribute to feelings of presence and enhance the persuasiveness of presented information. The deception literature has, however, yet to examine how such medium attributes lead to victimization in a phishing attack. The present research thus fills an important gap in the literature. The study explores how perceptions of presence in a phishing attack influence its victimization rate. This is examined using an experiment in which participants are subjected to a phishing attack where the amount of social presence in the email is manipulated. In contrast to subjects in the lean information conditions, those in the informationrich condition were more likely to heuristically process presence cues, leading to their victimization.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore user susceptibility to phishing by unpacking the mechanisms that may influence individual victimization. The focus is on the characteristics of the e-mail message, users’ knowledge and experience with phishing, and the manner in which these interact and influence how users cognitively process phishing e-mails. Design/methodology/approach – A field experiment was conducted where 194 subjects were exposed to a real phishing attack. The experimenters manipulated the contents of the message and measures of user traits and user processing were obtained after the phishing attack. Findings – Of the original list of targets, 47 percent divulged their private information to a bogus form page. Phishing susceptibility was predicted by a particular combination of both low attention to the e-mail elements and high elaboration of the phishing message. The presence of a threat or reward-based phishing message did not affect these processes, nor did it affect subsequent phishing susceptibility. Finally, individual factors such as knowledge and experience with e-mail increased resilience to the phishing attack. Research limitations/implications – The findings are generalizable to students who are a particularly vulnerable target of phishing attacks. Practical implications – The results presented in this study provide pragmatic recommendations for developing user-centered interventions to thwart phishing attacks. Lastly the authors suggest more effective educational efforts to protect individuals from such online fraud. Originality/value – This study provides novel insight into why phishing is successful, the human factor in susceptibility to online deception as well the role of information processing in effective decision making in this context. Based on the findings, the authors dispel common misconceptions about phishing and discuss more effective educational efforts to protect individuals from such online fraud.

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