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Alzheimer's Disease and related dementia (ADRD) is prevalent in one in nine individuals age 65 or above, and it has a 65% higher risk of incidence for African American/Black adults. With an aging population in the United States and persisting healthcare inequities for African American/Black adults, our research aims to explore design requirements of a digital health platform for delivering culturally relevant content that informs African Americans/Black adults (45 years and older) about brain health and participation in clinical ADRD studies. We conducted seven focus groups (n = 44) to collect information on facilitators and barriers to brain health literacy and participation in clinical ADRD research, followed by seven participatory design workshops (n = 44) to collaboratively develop solutions for improving brain health literacy and participation in clinical ADRD research. Our findings provide insights into incorporating community into accessible, technological design for reducing brain health disparities for African American/Black adults.
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This content will become publicly available on January 26, 2027
Linguistic Hooks: Investigating The Role of Language Triggers in Phishing Emails Targeting African Refugees and Students
Phishing and sophisticated email-based social engineering attacks disproportionately affect vulnerable populations, such as refugees and immigrant students. However, these groups remain understudied in cybersecurity research. This gap in understanding, coupled with their exclusion from broader security and privacy policies, increases their susceptibility to phishing and widens the digital security divide between marginalized and non-marginalized populations. To address this gap, we first conducted digital literacy workshops with newly resettled African refugee populations (n = 48) in the US to improve their understanding of how to safeguard sensitive and private information. Following the workshops, we conducted a real-world phishing deception study using carefully designed emails with linguistic cues for three participant groups: a subset of the African US-refugees recruited from the digital literacy workshops (n = 19), African immigrant students in the US (n = 142), and a control group of monolingual US-born students (n = 184). Our findings indicate that while digital literacy training for refugees improves awareness of safe cybersecurity practices, recently resettled African US-refugees still face significant challenges due to low digital literacy skills and limited English proficiency. This often leads them to ignore or fail to recognize phishing emails as phishing. Both African immigrant students and US-born students showed greater caution, though instances of data disclosure remained prevalent across groups. Our findings highlight, irrespective of literacy, the need to be trained to think critically about digital security. We conclude by discussing how the security and privacy community can better include marginalized populations in policy making and offer recommendations for designing equitable, inclusive cybersecurity initiatives.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2210185
- PAR ID:
- 10662410
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies
- Volume:
- 2026
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2299-0984
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 201 to 223
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- phishing, refugees and immigrants, psycholinguistics, cybersecurity, privacy
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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