Email communication has become an indispensable aspect of modern life, enabling rapid and efficient information exchange for individuals and organizations worldwide. However, the rise of phishing attacks poses a significant threat to the security and privacy of email users, with attackers continuously refining their techniques to exploit unsuspecting victims. This systematic literature review (SLR) aims to examine the challenges faced in email phishing detection for both private and organizational users, highlighting the unique obstacles and requirements for each user group. By analyzing relevant and current research from the past three years, this study seeks to identify the key challenges in email phishing detection, including the evolving tactics used by attackers, the limitations of current detection methods, and the hurdles in user education and awareness. Furthermore, it investigates the differential impact of these challenges on private and organizational users, with a focus on the potential differences. The comparative analysis offers valuable insights into the distinct challenges private and organizational users face in their efforts to defend against email phishing attacks. Understanding these differences is crucial for developing targeted, effective solutions that can enhance the overall resilience and security of email communication systems. Ultimately, this SLR serves as a foundation for future research and development in the field of phishing detection, fostering a safer online environment for all users.

Background: Much has happened in information technology in the last decade, and the amount of information someone can be exposed to is enormous. There are many digital information channels today used at different organizations. This research study has investigated which channel is used the most, and if there are any methods for handling the flow of information. With these tools and methods, together with a sufficient literature review a proposed model was developed to aid organizations with their information flow. Aim: To conduct research in the field of internal communication with focus on digital channels, to finally come up with what tools and methods can be used for improved internal communication, and to propose a model for this. Method: Three sources of data collections have been used. The first one is semi-structured interviews, where six volunteers have participated, the age ranging from 31-60. The targeted volunteers were the managers, and the employees of the organizations. The second is surveys where 14 volunteers contributed, where we used snowball sampling. The third is a document study that consists of research-generated literature review. Results/Conclusion: Our analysis concluded that the most useful tools for communicating with digital channel sare, namely, email, intranet and telephone. However, the usefulness of the tools decline rapidly when too much unnecessary information flows in the wrong channels. What this research study came up with regarding contribution was an easy to use four step model to be able to classify the information and use the correct channel for it. Working alongside this model, will help with minimizing information overload in the channels used for communication. It is also important from an organization perspective when onboarding employees to learn which channels are used for which kind of information.

Sending email is a very common activity among Swedish consumers nowadays. Email advertising has become a big part of the email usage - both permission-based and unwanted. The purpose of this study was to identify Swedish consumers’ total attitude towards permission- based email advertising, based on the three components cognition, affection and behavior. After identifying the attitude, correlation between the components was examined. The result was used to try Prensky’s generation theory regarding digital natives and digital immigrants, to investigate if it can be useful in the subject email advertising. A quantitative method was used, by publishing a survey on Facebook, which got totally 187 useful responses. The result showed an overall negative attitude and a high correlation between cognition and affection. A medium high correlation between cognition and behavior, and affection and behavior was found. The results partly showed a difference between digital natives and digital immigrants attitude towards email advertising. In the survey a division of four age groups, instead of two, was made. Results from the four groups showed a mix of positive and negative responses, which indicates that Prensky’s generation theory is too general, and cannot be used within email advertising.

<p><strong>OBJECTIVE: </strong>The aim of this study was to explore an alternative method of secure data exchange of patient information among physicians using their existing email.<strong></strong></p> <p><strong>METHODS: </strong>A four-step framework was designed to effectively conduct the research. It involved designing a prototype of a web-based system called ST-SecRx to simulate secure communication between physicians while exchanging sensitive patient data through email. The simulation achieved through the system was meant to determine and measure response of physicians to the use of secure email or similar communication tools for exchanging patient data. Physicians were invited to use ST-SecRx and subsequently participate in a survey to determine its acceptability and their perceptions about the usefulness of the software. Finally, the data collected from the survey were analyzed.</p> <p><strong>RESULTS:</strong> Data were collected from 22 physicians from various healthcare facilities in the province of Ontario, Canada. Eliminating questionnaires with no response resulted in 19 valid responses. Results revealed that 57.9% used email support provided by their organization for exchanging patient data. Over 70% acknowledged that factors such as: ease of use, not having to use an email different from the one provided by their employer, not having to create and remember new password every three to six months, and data transfer complying with privacy regulations would facilitate their use of ST-SecRx. More than 50% of the physicians felt that the simulated system as demonstrated to them was more secure and easier to use when compared to previously used methods of patient data exchange through email. The majority of the physicians (from 57.9% to 73.7%) agreed with all the six questions on behavioral intention to use ST-SecRx. Overall 42% were willing to pay between $5 and $20 per month for ST-SecRx. Additional analysis of data by age, sex and discipline did not reveal any substantial differences in their enthusiasm to use the system.</p> <p><strong>CONCLUSION: </strong>The current research was successful providing data on what is important to clinicians who want to exchange data on patients with other clinicians. Use of systems similar to the prototype ST-SecRx could be an improvement over conventional email, provided that they would ensure security using encrypted technology under public key infrastructure methods and systems. Overall the physicians were satisfied with ST-SexRx and found it simple, fast, easy to use, and secure, and they indicated that they intended to use it if it were made available and it conformed to privacy and security standards. Also, such a secure system would have the potential to reduce the overall cost of healthcare by reducing duplication of diagnostic tests and making patient- specific information exchange faster. More research needs to be conducted with a larger sample size to validate the findings of this study. The limitations, dissatisfaction, and concerns expressed by the physicians who used ST-SecRx could direct future research. Future studies could include other healthcare professionals in the exchange of sensitive clinical data.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

This essay aims to discover differences and similarities in the linguistic behavior ofpoliteness in apologetic expressions between men and women in emails. Material wastaken from the Enron Corpus. This Corpus includes information about the senders andrecipients of the chosen email, the context, and an email thread. We searched for twodifferent apologetic expressions, "sorry" and "I apologize", and chose 25 of eachexpression to analyze superficially. We also compared them to each other and by thegender of the user. Out of those 25, we chose ten to analyze more in-depth, five ofwhich used "sorry" and the other five used "I apologize" as apologetic expression. Weanalyzed the emails through the lens of politeness theory, which apologetic expressionwas used, if humour occurred, and to what email genre it belonged. Our results basedon this study showed that women used the apologetic expression "I apologize" morethan men, and that men used "sorry" more frequently than women. One possibleconclusion of this is that women appeared to be more formal in their emails. They alsoindicated tendencies to be nurturing, cohesive, and cooperative in their language. On theother hand, men showed less tendencies of formal behavior and more informallanguage.

There has been an increasing growth in the use of technology resources in traditional classroom styled higher education courses. This growth has received with both optimism and criticism. One of the issues critics have posed is that the use of technology resources does little, if anything, to improve student learning. As a result, this research examined if the use of technology contributes to student learning outcomes and student engagement activities, above and beyond student demographic variables. Specifically, this study investigated if the use of computer mediated conferencing (CMC) tools (i.e., email and electronic discussion boards) and computer aided instructional (CAI) resources (i.e., use of the computer and the Internet) contribute to student learning. Included in the sample were 2000 college students, which were randomly drawn from the 2003 College Student Experience Questionnaire database. The survey included 53 Likert scale items with reliability ranges from .78 to .88 on each of the composite scales. For the data analysis, eight multiple regressions were conducted on student learning outcomes and student learning engagement. Student learning outcomes included four composite scales, measuring students' personal and social development, general education gains, intellectual development, science and technology gains, and vocational preparation. The student engagement scale was comprised of three composite scales, which included faculty interactions, social, political and scientific discussions, and diversity and social interactions. The findings revealed that the use of technology resources does contribute to student learning, above and beyond student's background variables. The model inclusive of technology variables explained 4% to 7% of the gains in student learning, while student background variables contributed .03% to 2% of the gains. The findings suggest incorporating the use of technology can aid students in the learning process, though the effect size was fairly modest in most cases. The use of computer mediated conferencing and computer assisted learning tools should be used in combination with traditional classroom instructions to have the best effects. / Ph. D.

No / This paper introduces multimedia design guidelines for browsing large volumes of e-mail data. These software design guidelines derived from two sets of experiments under a prototype version of a multimedia e-mail tool. The experiments tested various forms of audio-visual communication metaphors. For example, the auditory stimuli consisted of musical sounds (earcons), compositional sounds, environmental sounds (auditory icons), stereophony, pitch, synthesised and recorded speech as well as other sound effects. The first set of experiments involved the multimedia browsing of simple and complex sets of e-mail data. The second set of the experiments involved the communication of e-mail categories and other related e-mail information such as the presence or absence of an attachment, priority status and subject of an e-mail. The results of these two sets of experiments are described and linked with other experiments in the literature. The paper integrates and discusses all these experimental results, the incorporation of auditory stimuli and the suitability of different types of multimedia metaphors for the design of audio-visual browsing techniques of large volumes of e-mail data. The totality of the multimedia design appeared to offer a meaningful, easily understood and recognised interaction mechanism and therefore demonstrated a potential way to maximise the volume of information that could be communicated to users. The application of synthesised and recorded speech, earcons and auditory icons as well as sound effects are also discussed in the light of the experimental results with emphasis upon issues of synergy, synchronisation, consistency, structure, classification and presentation of different types of communication metaphors as an integral part of the software design process. Furthermore, the suitability and use of compositional sounds are also discussed. The paper concludes with a set of practical guidelines for software and multimedia designers and a design approach for this type of data browsing.

With the continuous rise in email use, the prevalence and sophistication of phishing attacks have increased. Expanding cybersecurity awareness and strengthening email practices will help reduce the dangers posed by phishing emails, but ultimately, the extent to which a user can accurately detect phishing emails directly impacts the amount of risk to which they are exposed. Being interrupted while reading and replying to emails is a consequence of working in a dynamic world. Interruptions are often identified to be disruptive, both in terms of time costs and performance changes; they reliably increase a task's completion time, but their impact on accuracy is less consistent. The present three studies manipulated the length (Experiment 1), difficulty (Experiment 2), and similarity (Experiment 3) of interruptions in accordance with the memory for goals (MFG) model, which aims to explain why interruptions may be disruptive. Participants classified emails as either phishing or legitimate, while periodically being interrupted with a secondary task. Across all three experiments, interruptions did not affect classification accuracy, but they did reliably increase classification response time. Oculomotor analyses indicated that interruptions, regardless of type, impaired memory of previously encoded email information. This was evidenced across all three experiments by an increase in refixations and an increase in the distance between fixations pre- and post-interruption. MFG can account for some of these findings, but not all. Interruptions did not impair performance on an email classification task when participants could review the interrupted information, yet overall classification accuracy was still low. These results may suggest a pathway toward improving email classification performance however, as participants exhibited behaviors known to improve performance on other tasks, such as revisiting previously viewed areas of an email.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of gamification in cybersecurity education, focusing on enhancing email phishing awareness among university students. It compares gamified learning methods with traditional video-based education to determine which approach better improves phishing detection skills. A controlled experiment involved two groups of 30 participants each: one received traditional video-based education on phishing awareness, and the other used a gamified platform, "EmailAware." Pre- and post-tests with the Jigsaw Online Phishing Quiz measured awareness and detection abilities, and a qualitative survey gathered participant feedback on the gamified approach. Results showed significant improvement in phishing detection skills in both groups, with the gamified group demonstrating a higher improvement rate (59%) compared to the traditional group (41%). Participants in the gamified group reported higher engagement and motivation due to the interactive nature of the approach. Limitations include a small sample size and the focus on university students, potentially limiting generalizability. Future research should include a more diverse participant pool and explore the long-term effects of gamified learning on cybersecurity awareness. The findings suggest integrating gamified elements into cybersecurity education can significantly enhance learning outcomes, offering practical recommendations for designing more effective and engaging training programs, ultimately improving overall digital security.

The goal with this research has been to answer questions related to social engineeringbased phishing attacks: email phishing and website phishing. This study answers questions like why these attacks occur, which type of internet users easily get tricked by phishers, Moreover this study consist of different defense mechanisms that exist against the attacks, weaknesses in them, examples to improve them and other technical solutions against them. Often the attacks consist of a combination of both email phishing and website phishing. A link can be sent to a user via email that leads to a phishing site where the user get tricked into submitting personal information.These attacks aims to steal personal information and money from users. There are anti-phishing tools in web browsers and mailsystems to protect the user. There are special phishingfilters and features that can protect users from phishing mails and detect them. Users who get attacked by phishers are those who lack knowledge about them. But since high educated people and security experts also fall for phishing beacuse phishers develop new techniques and strategies to attack users, more advanced techniques in web browsers and mail systems are needed. This study was done through a systematic litterture review where 10 articles where chosen. These articles where studied and summarised through a content analysis. / Målet med denna undersökning har varit att besvara frågor relaterat till social engineeringbaserade phishngattacker: email phishing och website phishing. Den här studien tar upp varför dessa attacker utförs, vilka användare som mest blir drabbade av de. Vidare handlar studien om olika skyddsmekanismer som existerar mot attackerna, vilka bristerna det finns i de, eventuella förbättringsförslag och förslag på andra tekniska lösningar. Oftast sker attackerna genom en kombination av email phishing och website phishing. En skadlig länk kan skickas till en användare via mail som leder till en phishingsida där användaren blir lurad till att fylla i privata uppgifter om sig själv. Dessa attacker sker främst för att stjäla personuppgifter och leder oftast till att en användare blir drabbad finansiellt. Det finns olika anti-phishing verktyg i webbläsare och mailsystem för att skydda användare. Mot email phishing finns speciella phishingfilter och olika kännetecken som hjälper till att skydda mot skadliga mail och upptäcka de. De flesta som blir drabbade av phishing är just användare som ej är medvetna om vad phishing är. Men eftersom det visat sig att även högutbildade människor och säkerhetsexperter faller för phishing då phisher utvecklar nya tekniker och strategier att utföra attacker, krävs det mer avancerade tekniska lösningar i webbläsare och mailsystem. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av en systematisk litteraturstudie, där 10 artiklar valdes ut. Dessa artiklar bearbetades och sammanfattades genom en innehållsanalys.