You Should Be Afraid of Fear: How Phishing Uses the Psychology of Fear
A common phrase used in recognizing a scam is to question whether something is too good to be true. However, when it comes to phishing scams, I think it’s equally useful to question if something is too bad to be true. Often, scammers get their victims to panic into letting their guards down by catastrophizing. Email subject lines such as ‘YOUR IDENTITY MAY BE AT RISK’ and scam phone calls that claim the government is involved and they aren’t happy with you have become commonplace. I want to discuss this new take on an old scam. I think the biggest reason for this shift in scam framing is that scammers have learned to take advantage of people's fear of loss. A quote from Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale states that “the fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.” Scammers have realized the truth of this phenomenon in recent years and are adapting their phishing strategies to take advantage of it. Most people would appreciate ...