Phishing is fundamental to cyber attacks. This research determined the effect of Internet user age and email content such as weapons of influence (persuasive techniques that attackers can use to lure individuals to fall for an attack) and life domains (a specific topic or aspect of an individual's life that attackers can focus an email on) on spear-phishing (targeted phishing) susceptibility. In total, 100 young and 58 older users received, without their knowledge, daily simulated phishing emails over 21 days. A browser plugin recorded their clicking on links in the emails as an indicator of their susceptibility. Forty-three percent of users fell for the simulated phishing emails, with older women showing the highest susceptibility. While susceptibility in young users declined across the study, susceptibility in older users remained stable. The relative effectiveness of the attacks differed by weapons of influence and life domains with age-group variability. In addition, older compared to young users reported lower susceptibility awareness. These findings support effects of Internet user demographics and email content on susceptibility to phishing and emphasize the need for personalization of the next generation of security solutions.

Objectives: Fraud in the aged is an emerging public health problem. An increasingly common form of deception is conducted online. However, identification of cognitive and socioemotional risk factors has not been undertaken yet. In this endeavor, this study extended previous work suggesting age effects on susceptibility to online deception. Methods: Susceptibility was operationalized as clicking on the link in simulated spear-phishing emails that young (18−37 years), young-old (62−74 years), and middle-old (75−89 years) Internet users received, without knowing that the emails were part of the study. Participants also indicated for a set of spear-phishing emails how likely they would click on the embedded link (susceptibility awareness) and completed cognitive and socioemotional measures to determine susceptibility risk profiles. Results: Higher susceptibility was associated with lower short-term episodic memory in middle-old users and with lower positive affect in young-old and middle-old users. Greater susceptibility awareness was associated with better verbal fluency in middle-old users and with greater positive affect in young and middle-old users. Discussion: Short-term memory, verbal fluency, and positive affect in middle-old age may contribute to resilience against online spear-phishing attacks. These results inform mechanisms of online fraud susceptibility and real-life decision-supportive interventions toward fraud risk reduction in aging.

Increasing misinformation spread poses a threat to older adults but there is little research on older adults within the fake news literature. Embedded in the Changes in Integration for Social Decisions in Aging (CISDA) model, this study examined the role of (a) analytical reasoning; (b) affect; (c) news consumption frequency, and their interplay with (d) news content on news veracity detection in aging. Conducted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the present study asked participants to view and evaluate COVID or non-COVID (i.e., everyday) news articles, followed by measures of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency. News veracity detection was comparable between young and older adults. Additionally, fake news detection for non-COVID news was predicted by individual differences in analytic reasoning for both age groups. However, chronological age effects in fake news detection emerged within the older adult sample and interacted with the CISDA-derived components of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency by news content. Collectively, these findings suggest that age-related vulnerabilities to deceptive news are only apparent in very old age. Our findings advance understanding of psychological mechanisms in news veracity detection in aging.