Dr. Cranor is a professor from Carnegie Melon University. Her team has developed a great game to help people learn how to spot Phishing attempts.
Anti-Phishing-Phil is a tiny little fish whose adventures teach him about the perils of scam emails and how to spot them.
While the game is cute, it is the initial series of frames that are really good in introducing the user to URL construction and what to look for and spot a fraud.
I sent Professor Cranor an email suggesting that she give the user a "Pause" button so they can go look up URLs presented in the game to see if they are or are not fakes. During one of my rounds on the game a URL was offered that I did not recognize, but the game did not give me enough time to go check it. The game also seemed to malfunction in that it was offerring users a chance to register and possibly win a prize, however, it never presented the screen to register.
The initial testing is over (no more prize), but you can still play the game. I suggest that everyone give the game a try, several in fact, so that you can become more familiar with the scams that exist.
You can also find more useful information on the CMU Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory(CUPS) page on Internet Trust issues.
In my next post I will show you how to decode a URL.
Post a Comment