NoPhish App Evaluation: Lab and Retention Study

Phishing is a prevalent issue of today’s Internet. Previous approaches to counter phishing do not draw on a crucial factor to combat the threat the users themselves. We believe user education about the dangers of the Internet is a further key strategy to combat phishing. For this reason, we developed an Android app, a game called –NoPhish–, which educates the user in the detection of phishing URLs. It is crucial to evaluate NoPhish with respect to its effectiveness and the users’ knowledge retention. Therefore, we conducted a lab study as well as a retention study (five months later). The outcomes of the studies show that NoPhish helps users make better decisions with regard to the legitimacy of URLs immediately after playing NoPhish as well as after some time has passed. The focus of this paper is on the description and the evaluation of both studies. This includes findings regarding those types of URLs that are most difficult to decide on as well as ideas to further improve NoPhish.