Phishing in Social Media: Investigating Training Techniques on Instagram Shop

Abstract

As new communication technologies emerge, social media continues to grow rapidly and falls into users' hands. However, social media also brings new forms of phishing attacks compared to conventional email phishing and desires new forms of anti-phishing intervention including user training. To tackle this problem, we investigated the efficacy of current email training techniques for phishing scams on Instagram Shop advertisements. Participants were tasked to rate how likely they would recommend an office product in Instagram Shop to their boss based on how legitimate the advertisement (ad) appeared. Our results indicated that shoppers’ experience with Instagram influenced their ability to distinguish between phishing and legitimate ads. However, more-frequent Instagram users did not have a decreased susceptibility to phishing than less-frequent users, and the current training techniques had no effect on participants’ ratings of phishing and legitimate ads. Future studies may explore other training methods, such as including feedback to participants.