Phishing the Mind: Why Spam Outsmarts People, Not Technology

When you open your email platform, one thing it surely doesn’t scream of is “danger”. But over the years, what began as a primary channel for communication across individuals, businesses, and governments has become an open invitation for abuse. Today, spam emails have grown from being just a nuisance to becoming an entry point for fraud, extortion, espionage, and economic disruption. Email-based attacks are now more personal, more convincing, and more likely to succeed. According to VIPRE’s Q1 2025 Email Threat Trends Report, what makes them so dangerous is not their technical complexity, but their ability to trick people. The United States has become both the top sender and recipient of these malicious campaigns. VIPRE’s data shows that 57% of global spam originated from US infrastructure, and a staggering 75% of the world’s malicious emails ended up in American inboxes. We look at what new tricks are helping threat actors weaponize the email system, and how to catch them. A recent scan of over 1.45 billion emails in the first quarter of 2025 by cybersecurity company VIPRE revealed that about 92% were spam. Nearly 70% of those spam emails carried malicious intent, such as phishing, scams, or malware. That scale of threat is not isolated when you consider that SlashNext’s report recorded a 202% rise in email-based attacks in 2024 alone. VIPRE’s findings show that this wave of malicious email is no longer built around complex payloads, but instead focuses on manipulating the minds of recipients.

Continue reading here to find out why hacking the human mind is now an easier target than breaching security checkpoints, explained by Ilia Badeev, Head of Data Science at Trevolution Group.