Who's Most Gullible Online And Why? Secrets From Scam World Revealed

redtape.msnbc.msn.com:

Think grandma and grandpa are the most likely to fall for Internet scams? Think again, suggests a study on gullibility released earlier this month.

Younger, less educated, underpaid Americans are the group most likely to fall for schemes of digital criminals peddling fake charities, rogue antivirus software or myriad other cons, the survey indicates. Middle-class earners are less likely to be victims, but folks earning more than $200,000 annually seem to be almost as gullible those living below the poverty line, it found.

Read the whole story: redtape.msnbc.msn.com

Comments

[J R M]

05:21 PM on 01/16/2012

Essentially everyone will fall to a carefully targeted spearphishing attack. We can take that as a given.The question is, what fraction of people will fall to generic broadcast attacks, and what can they do to reduce their vulnerability.

I am a computer security professional - I have been in the field for over 20 years.

The only social networking information I post is at Linked-In. Nothing else - no Facebook, Twitter, Google+, ... I do not post my current activities so attackers can not pick it up to use against me.

My wife and kids run with user (not administrative) level accounts on the home machines. They do not have the ability to install or update machine-wide software. They are still vulnerable to user level attacks - but I have them use Firefox with NoScript installed to reduce vulnerability to advertising / forwarding attacks.

I do the bulk of the online ordering from a notebook that I run that is locked down.

We do our banking from a dedicated PC that is used only for that - no browsing, e-mail, etc (old machine stuck behind the desk with a KVM switch to the peripherals).

[jf12]

11:35 AM on 01/16/2012

Breaking News: Young women are the most gullible.