Is This Phishing? Older Age Is Associated With Greater Difficulty Discriminating Between Safe and Malicious Emails.

Objectives: As our social worlds become increasingly digitally connected, so too has concern about older adults falling victim to "phishing" emails, which attempt to deceive a person into identity theft and fraud. In the present study, we investigated whether older age is associated with differences in perceived suspiciousness of phishing emails.

Methods: Sixty-five cognitively normal middle-aged to older adults rated a series of genuine and phishing emails on a scale from definitely safe to definitely suspicious.