Date of Publication :16th November 2017

Abstract: In this paper, we present results of surveys of users on their ability to recognize phishing emails as opposed to legitimate emails. User awareness is one of the most important approaches to phishing detection. We first conducted a survey of user confidence in their ability to detect phishing. We then designed a survey questionnaire that contained some legitimate emails and some phishing emails. We conducted a second survey to test the ability of a sample set of users to detect phishing. The results were mixed. After the second survey, we conducted a training session on the same group of users to train them to detect phishing. After the training we conducted a third survey with a somewhat different questionnaire to test their ability to detect phishing. Our results suggest that training considerably improves the ability to detect phishing. However, a significant minority are still not able to detect phishing.

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