A simple step to help you avoid falling for an online scam

The disruptions caused by the pandemic have led to increased use of online services to make purchases or perform banking procedures.

To quickly capitalize on this trend, fraudsters have increased the scale and spectrum of online fraud.

Such scams were discovered by cyber security firm F5 Fishing (A term in English for how scammers refer to victims as “fish” by getting them to take the bait.) Increased by more than 200% Compared to the annual average, during the height of epidemics.

One type of scam that many victims fall into is fake websites (fake websites of legitimate businesses or government pages).

According to Best Business BureauA nonprofit organization that handles consumer complaints said fake websites were among the top scams reported.

These result in sales losses of approximately $380 million in the United States by 2022. In fact, many cases go unreported and the losses are very high.

We developed a series of experiments to assess what factors influence people’s ability to distinguish between a real site and a fake site.

In our studies, we showed participants screenshots of six real websites and their fake versions (Amazon, ASOS fashion store, Lloyds Bank, WHO Covid-19 donation page, PayPal and HMRC, UK government tax site).

The number of participants varied, but we counted more than 200 for each experiment.

In each study, participants were asked whether or not the screenshots showed the actual website.

Then, they took tests to assess their knowledge of the Internet and their analytical reasoning.

Previous research has shown that analytical reasoning affects our ability to distinguish between genuine and false messages and types of emails Fishing.

People use two types of information processing: system one and system two.

He The system is fast, automatic, intuitive And it has to do with our emotions. We know that professionals trust a system to make quick decisions.

He The system is both slow, conscious and laborious. The ability to perform analytical reasoning tasks well is related to thinking system two, not system one.

Therefore, we used tasks that required analytical reasoning to see whether people leaned more toward systems thinking in one or both.

An example of one of the questions we use in our analytical reasoning test: “A bat and a ball cost (all together) $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” .

Our results show that greater analytical reasoning ability is linked to a higher ability to distinguish real from fake websites.

Other researchers have found Time pressure reduces efficiency of people discovering the type of emails Fishing.

These appeal to more than one processing system rather than two systems. Fraudsters don’t want us to carefully evaluate the information they send us, but instead want us to consciously engage with it.

Our next step was therefore to give participants less time to complete the task (10 seconds compared to 20 seconds in the first experiment).

This time we used new participants. We found that people who had less time to assess the credibility of a website were less able to discriminate between genuine and fake sites.

A 50% less accuracy compared to a group that had 20 seconds to decide which site was real and which was fake.

In our final study, we gave a new group of participants 15 tips for identifying fake websites (such as checking the domain name).

We asked half the group to prioritize accuracy and take as much time as they needed, while the other half were asked to work as quickly as possible.

Working quickly without being accurate was linked to poorer performance, and participants were less able to remember the 15 pieces we gave them.

As internet usage is on the rise among all age groups, fraudsters are taking advantage of people’s tendencies to use More intuitive information processing To assess whether a website is legitimate.

Fraudsters often frame their messages to encourage them to act quickly because they know the outcome is in their favor under these conditions, such as saying the offer is ending soon.

Many tips on how to spot fake sites recommend using website checks such as looking closely at the domain name, checking for the lock symbol, etc. Stay safe onlineLook for typos and offers that seem too good to be true.

These recommendations require time and deliberate consideration.

In fact, the best advice you can follow is: No hurry.

*Yaniv Hanoch is Professor of Decision Sciences at the University of Southampton. Nicholas J. Kelly is a professor of social psychology at the same university in the United Kingdom.

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