Analyse real messages you were sent and write the user guidance from them

short · 35 min · Objective 2.1

Task

Take messages that actually arrived in your own mailbox, analyse what each one asked for and which lever it used, and write guidance from the evidence rather than from the folklore. Nothing is sent, nothing is simulated, and no message is created -- the material is what people have already tried on you.

Steps

  1. Collect at least six suspicious messages from your own spam and inbox. Record them in lab/social/messages.csv with header channel,asked_for,lever,signal_that_gave_it_away,would_have_worked. Do not paste the messages themselves.
  2. For each, record the link destination by inspecting it rather than opening it, in lab/social/links.csv with header displayed_text,actual_domain,matches.
  3. Write lab/social/obsolete.md naming at least three signals that people are still taught and that no longer work, with why each one failed.
  4. Write lab/social/guidance.md as the advice you would give a user: no more than five points, each one something a person can do under pressure.
  5. Write lab/social/afterclick.md giving the ordered steps for a user who has already entered credentials, starting with what you say to them first.

Verify

awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=5 {n++} END {print n" message(s) analysed"}' lab/social/messages.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 {print $3}' lab/social/messages.csv | sort -u | wc -l
awk -F, 'NR>1 && $3 ~ /no/ {n++} END {print n" mismatched link(s)"}' lab/social/links.csv
grep -Ec '^[-*0-9]' lab/social/obsolete.md
grep -Ec '^[-*0-9]' lab/social/guidance.md
grep -Eic 'thank' lab/social/afterclick.md

Six messages with at least two distinct levers, obsolete signals named, and guidance of five points or fewer. The after-click steps must begin by thanking the user -- if they do not, the procedure will produce a user who hides the next one.

Notes

Keeping the guidance to five points is the hard constraint and the valuable one. Advice nobody can remember under pressure is advice that does not exist.

This is an independent study companion for CompTIA A+ Core 2 220-1202 and is not produced by or endorsed by CompTIA.