The 'Urgency Trap': Why Time Pressure Is Your Biggest Email Red Flag
KnowBe4, March 23,2026
The old rules for spotting a phishing email are changing. Remember looking for bad grammar and clumsy spelling? Thanks to AI, hackers' emails are increasingly polished and hard to spot.
But a new poll from KnowBe4 reveals the modern worker's most reliable alarm bell for a cyberattack isn't a typo; it's a sense of manufactured urgency.
Pressure to Act is the New Phishing Red Flag
Our data shows that a shocking 34% of people now identify 'pressure to act quickly' as the primary red flag of a fraudulent email. This social engineering trick has surpassed traditional indicators like:
- Unknown sender addresses (23%)
- Requests for sensitive information (23%)
- Poor spelling or grammar (20%)
Thanks to AI, hackers' emails are increasingly hard to spot, written perfectly in any language. However, the tell-tale sign is still their desire to get you to do something and do it quickly.