Using data type based security alert dialogs to raise online security awareness
Max-Emanuel Maurer, Alexander De Luca, Sylvia Kempe · 2011
When browsing the Internet, users are likely to be exposed to security and privacy threats -- like fraudulent websites. Automatic browser mechanisms can protect them only to some extent. In other situations it is still important to raise the users' security awareness at the right moment. Passive indicators are mostly overlooked and blocking warnings are quickly dismissed by habituated users. In this work, we present a new concept of warnings that appear in-context, right next to data the user has just entered. Those dialogs are displayed whenever critical data types -- e.g. credit card data -- are entered by the users into online forms. Since they do not immediately interrupt the users' interaction but appear right in the users' focus, it is possible to place important security information in a way that it can be easily seen.