The success of nearly every scam that confronts us depends on one single factor — gullibility, our willingness to believe something that’s untrue, and then to take action that involves giving away money or information, circulating untrue emails, or downloading malware onto our computers.

A gullibility survey by The Ponemon Institute, a well respected privacy and information security firm, identified the following characteristics:

• Among vulnerable categories, younger people are more likely to fall for a scam than seniors.
• Americans are more gullible than the British or Australians — the three groups the survey covered.
• Bogus prizes and antivirus software are the most successful at fooling people.
• Supporters of the two main political parties in the U.S. are equally gullible when it comes to believing things that are untrue — not just in politics but in all aspects of life.

Most of us think we’re better at identifying scams than we really are.

Quoted from Internet ScamBusters.  You may read the entire article here:
http://www.scambusters.org/gullibility.html