Reading this may harm your computer The psychology of malware warnings》.pdf

Computers in Human Behavior 41 (2014) 71–79 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevi /locate/comphumbeh Reading this may harm your computer: The psychology of malware warnings David Modic ⇑, Ross Anderson University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FD, United Kingdom a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Internet users face large numbers of security warnings, which they mostly ignore. To improve risk com- Available online 30 September 2014 munication, warnings must be fewer but better. We report an experiment on whether compliance can be increased by using some of the social-psychological techniques the scammers themselves use, namely Keywords: appeal to authority, social compliance, concrete threats and vague threats. We also investigated whether Malware users turned off browser malware warnings (or would have, had they known how). Persuasion 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Human computer interaction Psychology 1. Introduction While computer users are more likely to follow an inconvenient procedure if they are explicitly told it is for security purposes In life, as on the Internet, most of us are satisficers –