McAfee announced the results of a study that details the psychological games and other tactics cyber criminals use in social engineering scams propagated through junk email. In the study titled "Mind Games," the primary author, Dr. James Blascovich, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, offers analyses of multiple common scam emails and provides insights into how cyber criminals use fear, greed and lust to methodically steal personal and proprietary financial information.

"Scam spam works best by providing recipients with a sense of familiarity and legitimacy, either by creating the illusion that the email is from a friend or colleague, or providing plausible warnings from a respected institution," Dr. Blascovich noted. "Once the victim opens the email, criminals use two basic motivational processes, approach and avoidance, or a combination of the two, to persuade victims to click on dangerous links, provide personal information, or download risky files. By scamming $20 from just half of one percent of the U.S. population, cyber criminals can earn $15 million each day and nearly $5.5 billion in a year, a powerful attraction for skillful scam artists."

In-depth information on top phishing scams and security threats is available at the McAfee Threat Center at:
http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/default.asp

The "Mind Games," report is available online at:
http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/white_paper.html