Contextualised Cyber Security Awareness Approach for Online Romance Fraud

This publication proposes a contextualized cyber security awareness approach aimed at online romance fraud on dating platforms. The authors describe romance fraud as a growing threat, with financial losses and emotional harm, and argue that existing defenses focus on technical mitigation rather than victim education. Their goal is to provide timely, tailored advisory messages to users at the moment fraud is likely to begin, integrating these messages into the platform without disrupting user experience. The study develops a design that supports early detection and intervention by categorizing risk levels of matches and delivering bespoke messages when a trigger situation occurs. A prototype was built in Adobe XD to simulate how awareness content could appear within a dating workflow, and a controlled experiment was conducted with 12 participants divided into experimental and control groups. Participants in the experimental group received romance fraud awareness messages at relevant moments, while the control group did not. The evaluation used a mixed-methods approach, including a questionnaire and qualitative feedback, to assess perceived knowledge gain and behavioral responses. Results indicated that the experimental group showed a higher propensity to classify matches as high or medium risk and reported learning new information about romance fraud, whereas the control group did not. Qualitative feedback suggested that participants found the messages helpful and that awareness prompts could reduce impulsive or risky actions. The authors acknowledge privacy concerns related to analyzing conversation content and note that the study did not test on a live platform. They recommend future work to trial the approach in real settings and to address traceable privacy and transparency considerations.