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Experiences, Behavioral Tendencies, and Concerns of Non-Native English Speakers in Identifying Phishing Emails

A. Hasegawa,Naomi Yamashita,Mitsuaki Akiyama,Tatsuya Mori

Published 2022 in Journal of Information Processing

ABSTRACT

: Phishing, a form of online fraud, remains a huge cybersecurity threat. Recent research in cybersecurity and risk management revealed the possibility that non-native speakers of the language used in phishing emails are more susceptible to such attacks. Although many studies have focused on the behaviors that native English speakers use to avoid phishing attacks, little is known about the behaviors of non-native speakers. Therefore, we conducted an online survey with 862 non-native English speakers (284 Germans, 276 South Koreans, and 302 Japanese). We showed that non-native English speakers are regularly exposed to English phishing emails. Through our scenario-based roleplay task, we found that participants, especially those who lacked confidence in English, had a higher tendency to ignore English emails without careful inspection than emails in their native languages. Furthermore, both the German and South Korean participants generally followed the instructions in the email in their native languages without careful inspection. Finally, our qualitative analysis revealed five main concerns in identifying English phishing emails: dif-ficulty understanding email content, di ffi culty identifying errors and unnatural language, unfamiliarity with phishing emails, decreased attention, and di ffi culty finding similar cases. These findings highlight the importance of providing non-native speakers with specific anti-phishing interventions that di ff er from those for native speakers.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2022

  • Venue

    Journal of Information Processing

  • Publication date

    Unknown publication date

  • Fields of study

    Linguistics, Computer Science

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.2197/ipsjjip.30.841
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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