🌍 Lost in Translation - Phishing Across Languages

What happens when the email is not in your language? 🤔

Emails are already cognitively demanding — and processing them in a second language can make everyday decisions even harder. Add phishing into the mix, and things get more complicated.

🔍 What are we studying?

We explore how language barriers affect email processing and phishing detection, particularly among internationals living in Germany.

Do people process (suspicious) emails differently when they are written in a non-native language?

In a lab study, German and non-German speakers worked through an inbox containing legitimate and phishing emails in both German and English, followed by interviews about their decision-making.

💡 So what?

Interestingly, phishing detection performance was similar across groups. However, non-German speakers experienced greater cognitive load, slower decision-making, and more fragmented reasoning when processing German emails.

✨ My interest: understanding how security tools can better support multilingual users rather than assuming everyone processes digital information in the same way.