The topic of the article is how older people are statistically more likely to get scammed on the internet. This relates to the principles of social science because older people are less familiar with the internet and it’s traps and pitfalls, and thus more likely to fall for something that younger people may instinctively know is a scam. The study’s research questions are how situational and individual level factors work differently by age. The study was carried out on a sample of 2,558 Americans, representing all factors of age, sex, and race, and included additional factors such as education, living arrangement, employment, and propensity for reporting a crime or asking for help. They also looked at prior research done in relation to their sample. We discussed in class how certain age groups varied their time online across different social media platforms. This means that people who want to target older, and therefore more scammable, targets, they don’t need to distribute their scam to all sites. Older people tend to have more money, be less aware of internet conventions, and be less likely to ask for help if they do get scammed. The contribution this study has is showing what factors could contribute to the likelihood of someone getting scammed, making it easier for cybersecurity professionals to focus their energy on the most likely cases first.

Parti, K. (2022). “Elder Scam” Risk Profiles: Individual and Situational Factors of Younger and Older Age
Groups’ Fraud Victimization. International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime: 5(3), 20-40.
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/ijcic/vol5/iss3/3
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