What Psychological Factors Make Us Fall For Online Fraud?
The hackersor hackers, examine the structure and way certain programs work to detect cracks in them and find opportunities to infect computers.
In the same way, people who develop strategies to scam others through the Internet (and from the comfort of their home) they have to put themselves in the shoes of the person they want to defraud and detect the corners in which their way of making decisions leaves unprotected flanks through which to introduce deception.
And the truth is that, as much as for some people these hoaxes seem ridiculous because they are so obvious, they have their “public” of poor Internet users who They end up giving their bank details without knowing that they are falling into a scam What’s more, there are people who, depending on the context and how they are, could be victims of these deceptions at a certain time and easily detect them at others.
This is, at least, one of the conclusions reached in a study conducted by AARP and published in a report called Caught in the Scammer’s Net. This document explains the risk factors that could make us victims of fraud online, and many of them are surprising.
The weight of emotions
Traditionally we have been thinking that decision-making is basically influenced by rational arguments. Thus, for example, deciding whether or not it is worth clicking on a link that has been sent to us through an e-mail would be based on evaluating the pros and cons of that action, estimating the risks, and the value given to the possible utility of doing that action.
However, the AARP study shows that the emotional state people are in when exposed to online scams is incredibly relevant. People who had just gone through a highly stressful experience such as being fired from your job or suddenly losing purchasing power, are significantly more likely to fall for these scams Likewise, individuals with feelings of isolation and loneliness also fall more easily into these traps.
Likewise, the simple fact of being a more impulsive person with a tendency to carry out risky activities also predisposes us to fall for online scams.
The explanation for this could be that staying in certain emotional states acts as a distraction that makes you “let your guard down” and pay less attention to relevant information. Thus, non-rational factors would make it more likely to choose one option than the other, regardless of whether, based on rational criteria, it is more or less attractive. This, by the way, occurs even in choosing a partner.
The profile of the “easy prey”
Beyond situational factors, there are also certain personal characteristics that make some profiles especially prone to falling for scams of this type For example, people who tend to sign up to use products to try the trial version that lasts a few days are easy targets, and the same goes for those who are more inclined to share their birthday and relationship status on social media. social networks like Facebook (specifically, they are 8% more likely to be deceived).
In turn, people predisposed to clicking on pop-ups (the little windows that open while browsing the Internet to advertise things) have a 16% higher risk of being victims of online scams.
It should be noted that these percentages do not indicate the potential danger of clicking on pop-ups or putting personal data on Facebook, but rather It simply explains factors that predict the risk of falling for online scams Even if all the pop-ups you click on are harmless, clicking on them indicates that when the opportunity to fall for an online scam appears, you will be more likely to fall for it.
This means that there is a part of the population that surfs the Internet with a certain level of alertness and is not exposed to this type of risk, while other people are more trusting in this sense or simply lack information about online actions. that are safe and those that can be dangerous.
That is why Simply knowing some basic internet rules makes you much less likely to fall for online scams People who know what the privacy policies of a website or service are, for example, are less likely to be deceived, and the same goes for those who know that banks never send links to forms to fill out to “verify.” personal information.
For its part, Internet browsing experience also influences. Among the people who participated as volunteers in the research, those who have started using the Internet more recently were the ones who fell for the scam of the Nigerian prince who writes to us to give us a large amount of money, while the rest of users deleted that email.
