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Researchers at a US university are educating people who fall for internet banking scams by taking a leaf out of the fraudsters' book.

A team at Carnegie Mellon University sent an e-mail to people who had fallen for phishing scams, where fraudsters send an e-mail purporting to be from a bank in order to get victims to reveal their online banking details. Instead of linking through to a fake banking website, the Carnegie e-mail took users to an educational site teaching them about the dangers of phishing.

In the study, which involved three groups of 14 volunteers, those who were sent the educational e-mail after falling for a phishing scam spent more than twice as much time studying the materials than those who were presented with the materials without first being tricked. They also became better at identifying phishing e-mails.