國立虎尾科技大學 |

Characterizing and Improving Mental Models of Secure Communication Tools.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Characterizing and Improving Mental Models of Secure Communication Tools./
Author:	Akgul, Omer.
Description:	1 online resource (273 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-08, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-08A.
Subject:	Computer science. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798381694697

Characterizing and Improving Mental Models of Secure Communication Tools.
Akgul, Omer.

Characterizing and Improving Mental Models of Secure Communication Tools. - 1 online resource (273 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-08, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

Investigating the adoption and correct use of secure communication tools has been an open research question for the past two decades, starting with research on encrypted email and moving on to a wide range of security & privacy tools. Barriers to adoption include; usability issues, social factors (e.g., network effects), and misaligned mental models. More recently, as secure instant messengers have seen widespread adoption-with some products reaching billions of users-and VPNs have become increasingly popular, researchers have uncovered a fundamental problem; misalignments between what secure communication tools can offer and what users believe. Even though users might have already adopted the state-of-the-art secure communication tools, insufﬁcient mental models lead to users overestimating capabilities, or, erroneously thinking other tools are more appropriate for use. Both scenarios are likely to hurt users' security & privacy postures. In this thesis I describe my approach to characterizing and improving mental models, I detail background and related works, my contributions, and discuss implications. Among my main contributions, I ﬁrst describe my work on an emerging vector of questionable security information, inﬂuencer VPN ads on YouTube. I show how this questionable information is linked to real-world mental models. Next, I detail my investigation into how the description of security & privacy technology, another source of inﬂuence, changes mental models. Further, I report on my efforts to improve mental models when they are already misaligned in the context of end-to-end encryption. A related study exploring best user sampling practices for studies like mine is discussed.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798381694697Subjects--Topical Terms:

573171
Computer science.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Secure communication toolsIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Characterizing and Improving Mental Models of Secure Communication Tools.
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653 $a Privacy postures
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