• by Ray Schultz , November 2, 2018

Americans remain a gullible lot when it comes to discerning whether they are reading fake political emails.

A new survey by Valimail shows that they blindly trust emails that match their political preferences.

For instance, only 36% of Democrats figured out that an email supposedly sent by Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke was fake. And a mere 20% of Republicans could see through a fraudulent email purporting to be from Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Overall, however, Republicans are marginally better at picking out frauds.

Valimail surveyed 1,079 individuals, showing them screenshots of 11 emails. Five emails were authentic and six were fakes.

The fakes included some that were found in "the wild" and images based on real emails that Valimail had doctored, employing techniques used by scam artists. Eight were political in nature, and of these, two were authentic and two were fakes.

The respondents correctly identified only 4.98 emails out of the 11 total. Older people did better, especially those age 75 and over, but people in the 45-54 age range did not do as well as those in the 18-24 cohort. Men were slightly more likely to spot the frauds. 

Some participants couldn’t even identify the legitimate emails. 

Of those polled, 90% look for suspicious requests in the email text.  Some are alerted by poor spelling or grammar. But many never get to the text—they check the “from” field first. 

Those who picked out the phony emails in the Texas Senate race had some clear indicators. O’Rourke voters were turned of by the request for a credit card number, expiration data and CW code. Cruz supporters saw something was wrong by instruction to call a number “for a complete refund.” 

"The results of this survey confirm what nation-states and bad actors have known for years: that email is incredibly vulnerable to impersonation, and is therefore a prime channel for spreading misinformation, malware, and fraud,” states Alexander García-Tobar, CEO and co-founder of Valimail. 

He adds: “More concerning is the fact that consumers’ trust in their public leaders and political candidates can be so easily abused for financial or political gain, when the tools to combat these types of attacks are readily available.”

Here’s one more finding: Only one person answered every question correctly.