Phishing Vulnerability Compounded by Older Age, APOE4 Genotype, and Lower Cognition

Abstract

With technological advancements, financial exploitation tactics have expanded into the online realm. Older adults may be particularly susceptible to online scams due to age- and Alzheimer’s Disease-related changes in cognition. In this study, 182 adults ranging from 18-90 years underwent cognitive assessment, genotyping for apolipoprotein E e4 (APOE4), and completed the lab-based Short Phishing Email Suspicion Test (S-PEST) as well as the real-life PHishing Internet Task (PHIT). Across both paradigms, older age predicted heightened susceptibility to phishing, with this enhanced susceptibility pronounced among older APOE4 allele carriers with lower working memory. Additionally, performance in both phishing tasks was correlated, in that reduced ability to discriminate between phishing and safe emails in S-PEST predicted greater phishing susceptibility in PHIT. The current study introduces S-PEST as an easy-to-administer, ecologically valid tool for assessing phishing susceptibility and identifies older age, APOE4, and lower cognition as risk factors of phishing vulnerability.

Financial Fraud and Deception in Aging

“…Indeed, declines in analytical reasoning were associated with reduced detection of false news stories with greater age among older adults [ 24 ]. Additionally, low memory function was associated with greater susceptibility to email-based phishing in older adults with this effect demonstrated both in the laboratory as well as in real-life deception paradigms [ 25 ], and particularly pronounced among older adults at heightened risk for developing Alzheimer’s Disease (i.e., carriers of the apolipoprotein ε4 (APOE4) risk allele) [ 26 ]. This finding contributes to growing evidence that Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (ADRD) are associated with impaired (financial) decision making and heightened deception risk [ 27 ]; financial exploitability may even serve as an early detection measure of cognitive decline and ADRD [ 28 , 29 ].…”