There have been many cyber criminals trying to hack into accounts. To teach about this teacher Jason Rickli had his computer science class create a test for their peers. To do this they had to get approved by the IT department and building administrators. Once they got approved the class got to work, they had to make sure that the test met the guidelines of the district policy by checking it with Ryan Spencer. Finally, they presented their results to the class.

“Phishing is an attempt to extract your data or clicks through email, phone calls, or messaging,” Rickli said. “The goal of the phisher is to get you to click on a link that may contain malicious software, or try to get you to enter your sign-on information to steal it to log into your accounts.”

Phishing is dangerous and could put your personal information at risk. To help teach about it, Rickli created a phishing awareness activity. The class created QR codes and sent emails to see who would interact with them.

“30 students clicked the link on the QR codes, 58 email links were clicked, and 35 email and password credentials were entered,” Rickli said.

300 students total emails got sent and 35 of them inadvertently shared private information online, putting themselves at risk. This type of behavior showcases an absence of awareness regarding online safety and the potential dangers of sharing personal details. They often unknowingly expose themselves to many threats like identity theft.

“I learned that the student population is pretty vulnerable to a digital phishing scheme,” Rickli said. “The ratio of emails to clicks was rather high for a population that has grown up in the digital age.” 

This shows how important it is to be careful online. Students often fall for phishing scams because they don’t know enough about online safety. Attackers shifted their strategy by tricking people into giving away their personal information.

“The weakest link in any system tends to be the end users,” Rickli said. “Updated networks have a lot of background safety protocols in place to defend against various attacks. So, many attackers have resorted to essentially asking people for their information.” 

This shows how crucial it is to educate people about online safety. They ran their test with other schools like Dexter and Saline and received similar results as the students in Chelsea.

“The results were pretty on par with the other tests that we ran. All schools performed pretty equally,” Rickli said.

Rickl’s initial assessment highlighted the similarity of test results across different schools. But this comes with a serious warning about the dangers and how it’s important to stay careful no matter how safe it seems.

“Be aware and alert. Even if you have the mindset of ‘they have all my information anyway,’ think about what they could do if they have access to your account,” Rickli said.