HotSoft

Previous research shows that Internet users are likely to trust the majority of websites, whether the website’s intent is legitimate or malicious. Earlier work has explored how users determine the trustworthiness of websites; for example, see the trust models of Riegelsberger (Riegelsberger, 2005) and Egger (Egger, 2000). More recent work has shown that users pay little attention to operating system and browser security indicators (Schecter, 2007).

Our research will examine the steps Internet users follow in order to determine the legitimacy of websites and/or online content. For example, some malicious websites may try to lure users to download malicious spftware, or to fraudulently obtain users’ credentials. By better understanding how users determine which websites they trust, we can develop software to help them identify illegitimate content, and avoid the danger it represents.

Egger, F. N. (2000). Trust me, I’m an online vendor. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI ’00 Extended abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1(6), 101-102.

Riegelsberger, J. (2005). The mechanics of trust: A framework for research and design. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 62(3), 381-422.

Schecter, S., E., Dhamija, R., Ozment, A., and Fischer, I. (2007). Emperor’s new security indicators: An evaluation of website authentication and the effect of role playing on usability studies. In Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.