What factors make us bite into online fraud?

The hackers, or hackers, examine the structure and the way certain programs work to detect cracks in them and find opportunities to infect computers.

In the same way, people who develop strategies to defraud 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 scam and detect the corners in which his way of making decisions leaves unprotected flanks through which to introduce the deception.

Are we vulnerable to internet scams?

And the truth is that, as much as these hoaxes seem ridiculous to some people, they are so obvious, they have their "public" of poor Internet users who they end up giving their bank details without them knowing that they are falling for a scam. What's more, there are people who, depending on the context and how they are, could be a victim of these deceptions at a certain moment 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 a victim of online fraud, 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, the fact of deciding whether or not it is worth clicking on a link that has come to us through an e-mail would be based on assess the pros and cons of that action, the estimation of the risks, and the value that is given to the possible utility of doing that action. 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 been through a highly stressful experience, such as being fired from your job or a sudden loss of purchasing power, are significantly more likely to fall for these scams. Similarly, individuals with feelings of isolation and loneliness they also fall more easily into these traps.

In the same way, the simple fact of being a more impulsive person and with a tendency to carry out risky activities also predisposes us to fall for the online scam.

The explanation for this could be that the fact of staying in certain emotional states acts as a distraction that causes us to "let our guard down" and pay less attention to relevant information. Thus, non-rational factors would be making 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, It happens even in the choice of a partner.

The profile of the "easy prey"

Beyond situational factors, there are also certain personal characteristics that make some profiles especially prone to fall for deception 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 prey, and the same is true for those who are more predisposed to share their birthday and their relationship status on 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 during the browsing the internet to advertise things) have a 16% higher risk of falling victim to the scam on-line.

The wisdom of the digital generation

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 the scam online. Although all clicked pop-ups 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. he.

This means that there is a part of the population that surfs the Internet with a certain level of alertness and that is not exposed to this type of risk, while other people are more trusting in this regard or simply lack information about what online actions are safe and what can be dangerous.

That is why Just knowing a few basic internet rules makes you much less likely to fall for an online scam.. People who know or know the privacy policies of a website or a service, 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" information staff.

For its part, the experience in Internet browsing 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 They fell for the scam of the Nigerian prince who writes us to give us a large amount of money, while the rest of the users deleted that e-mail.