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MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test

March 30, 2005

 
More than 300,000 people have taken the U.S. Edition of the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test with an average score of less than 70%.


 

 

 

 
There has been a notable shift in the U.S. test results over the past several months. According to MailFrontier Research™, today respondents correctly identify phishing emails 83% of the time, as compared to 68% of the time previously. However, respondents now correctly identify legitimate emails in the test only 52% of the time, compared with 81% previously. The most recent U.S. test data revealed that 96% of respondents inaccurately identify at least one of the test's email samples.

These findings suggest that email users are getting better at discovering phish, but are even more confused about legitimate email.

"Email threats of all types are of increasing concern to organizations and certainly phishing continues to threaten business communications by diluting customer trust and employee productivity," said Anne Bonaparte, president and CEO of MailFrontier. "The education initiatives undertaken over the past year have clearly had a significant impact -- it's encouraging to see that people are more successfully identifying phishing email. The unfortunate by-product, however, appears to be that people are becoming much more skeptical about email as they question legitimate emails at a much higher rate."

In the nine months since the initial release of the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test, phishing email attacks have continued to grow beyond a consumer problem to an issue that businesses must address. A recent MailFrontier-commissioned, national survey of 200 IT professionals, showed one-third of respondents have seen a 50 to 100 percent jump in phishing email reaching their organizations, while another 10 percent of respondents have witnessed a rise of more than 100 percent.

MailFrontier strongly believes that awareness and education complement technology in reducing the number of victims of phishing scams. MailFrontier offers educational tips on how to detect email phishing attacks to those who take the test. Individuals are encouraged to test their "phishing IQ" expertise:

MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test - U.K. Edition
http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/phishing_uk.html

MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test - U.S. Edition
http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/quiztest.html

In addition, MailFrontier and Microsoft are working together to address phishing through education and technology efforts. The companies began offering a co-branded version of the U.S. Edition of the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test on the MSN Safety site in late 2004.

 

 
   

 

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