Alert learners to the risks posed by social engineering and empower learners to avoid and handle social engineering attacks
About This Module
This curriculum module is based on takeaways from series four of NYC Digital Safety training videos. You may use this module by:
- Including it in your pre-existing public workshops
- Combining it with other NYC Digital Safety modules to make a longer data-privacy focused workshop
- Sharing the handout with library users at various service points
Downloadable presentation slides, a facilitation guide, and a handout can be found below. The handout from this module has been translated into Chinese, Haitian-Creole, Russian, and Spanish.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module, learners will be able to:
- Define social engineering
- Describe how social engineering works
- Identify approaches for handling and avoiding social engineering
Lesson Plan
This lesson plan is also included in the downloadable facilitation guide below. You are welcome to use any and all of this, or adapt it as you see fit.
This module will take approximately 50 minutes to complete.
Introduction and welcome
Greet learners and review the plan for this module
Defining social engineering
Provide a brief definition of social engineering and see if anyone has any questions or anything to add
Discussion: Manipulation techniques
Ask your learners to consider and share manipulation techniques that are commonly used by scammers. Get a crowdsourced list going
How social engineering works
Provide an overview of how social engineering attacks work, including the steps and methods used by scammers. Review the principles of persuasion. Pause to see if learners have noticed any of these before in spam/scam messages they might have received. Review the ways in which social engineering scams target people. Pause to see if there are any questions
Types of social engineering attacks and common signs
Review some examples of common kinds of social engineering attacks. Pause to see if anyone has questions or anything else to add. Review some of the warning signs of social engineering
Ways to avoid social engineering
Review the list of ways to avoid social engineering. Pause to see if anyone has anything else to add or any questions
Discussion: Approaches for avoiding social engineering
Break your learners into small groups. Have your learners brainstorm ways to avoid social engineering and record their thoughts on their guided handouts
Wrap up, final tips, and final questions
Review the closing thoughts and share the suggested resources. See if anyone has any final questions.
Next Steps
Download the materials below for use in your workshop or at service points throughout your library.
If you plan to create a longer privacy-focused workshop using these materials, here is a link to Google slides. Feel free to make a copy if you’d like to add these slides to any other deck.
And please let us know how it went! Use this form to share your feedback on this module. We’d love to hear from you.