Date of Award

Winter 2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Committee Director

Jeremiah D. Still

Committee Member

Ivan K. Ash

Committee Member

Xiao Yang

Abstract

Phishing has been a common problem in the world of cybersecurity for over a decade, leading to significant monetary and privacy losses. Phishing attacks commonly occur via email, but there has been a rise in a new form of phishing known as SMiShing. This attack vector occurs similarly to email phishing, except the malicious message is received via SMS text. While ways to mitigate phishing via email have been widely studied, there is a lack of research on SMiShing and ways to mitigate this problem from a human-centered approach. Interventions such as digital nudges have been successfully applied to phishing via email. However, there is a need to study how they can be used in the SMiShing context. Nudge types can be classified based on the dual processing system as being automatic or reflective by design. Research on designing nudges for cybersecurity-related issues suggests user motivation levels affect a nudge’s success. This study explored the effectiveness of two types of nudge interventions (ambient feedback, just-in-time prompt) to determine if an automatic or reflective style nudge better aids users in detecting malicious text messages and how individual motivation levels affect the nudges’ success. It was found that nudge type had no significant effect on SMiShing identification. Avoidance motivation was shown to have a positive correlation with overall SMiShing identification and a positive correlation with SMiShing identification for the reflective style nudge.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). 

DOI

https://doi.org/10.25777/06qd-0096

ISBN

9798197810021

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Psychology Commons

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