Getting Too Little Sleep Makes You Easier to Scam - Time Magazine

When Daylight Saving Time begins each March and clocks spring forward, people lose an hour of sleep. This sleep deprivation has been linked to higher rates of fatal car accidents the following week—but new research reveals another concerning effect: increased vulnerability to phishing scams.

A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the Monday after DST begins, people were 13% more likely to click on links within suspicious emails compared to other days. The research involved sending phishing emails to over 10,000 people to test their responses.

Sleep Impairs Judgment

Study author Eitan Schechtman, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at University of California, Irvine, was inspired by his university's routine cybersecurity tests. My university runs this program in which they send phishing emails every few months to educate employees about how to spot them, he explained. "I was wondering, as a sleep researcher, what sleep would do to that."

Multiple Risk Factors

Jason R.C. Nurse, a professor at the University of Kent who was not involved in the study, noted that various factors contribute to phishing susceptibility. Sleep deprivation can fit this profile because it has a direct impact on our decision-making and state of mind, he said. "If we're not thinking properly or rationally about what we're seeing in our inboxes, there's every chance that we might get caught out."

Fall Time Change Mystery

When clocks fall back in November, people theoretically gain an hour of sleep. However, Schechtman suspects this doesn't reduce scam vulnerability. "When you are given an extra hour, you unfortunately rarely use it to sleep more. A lot of times you use it to stay awake longer or enjoy your weekend a bit more," he explained.

The researcher collected additional data during the most recent fall transition but hasn't analyzed it yet. "I asked the journal to delay publication until right now, because we collected data for this last transition as well," he revealed. "None of my colleagues, none of my students knew that we were running this, because I wanted it to be secret." The results from this additional study will be published later.