The results of the study showed that:
Participants could not detect the real emails with any degree of confidence. They had a 52 percent overall accuracy rate.
Using more complex grammar resulted in fooling 74 percent of participants.
17 percent of participants could not identify any of the signals that were inserted in the impersonated emails.
Younger participants did better in detecting real emails.
Only 50 percent of the participants mentioned the fake names.
Only six participants could show the full header of an email.
Education, experience with emails usage and gender did not make a difference in the ability to detect the deceptive emails.