Ctrl+Alt+Deceive: Quantifying User Exposure to Online Scams
Platon Kotzias
Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2025 · Day 3 · Phishing & Fraud 2
In "Ctrl+Alt+Deceive: Quantifying User Exposure to Online Scams," Platon Kotzias, representing a collaborative effort between the Norton Research Group and the India Software Institute, presents a groundbreaking quantitative analysis of user exposure to various online scam types. The talk addresses a critical gap in cybersecurity research: a comprehensive, comparative understanding of how different scams impact users and their prevalence across the internet. This study is vital because online scams have escalated into a top-tier threat, inflicting not only profound emotional distress, including feelings of betrayal, embarrassment, and vulnerability, but also causing staggering financial damages.
AI review
Solid measurement paper with real telemetry scale — 25 million devices, 10 months, half a million scam SLDs — that fills a genuine gap in comparative scam exposure data. The UTM parameter technique for isolating ad-driven exposure is clever, and the 11-day active time vs. 17-hour phishing lifetime delta is the kind of concrete number defenders can actually use. Nothing here redefines the threat model or demands a slot over stronger submissions, but it's honest empirical work that earns its place.