Towards Usable Web Privacy and Security

Speaker
Lorrie Cranor
Associate Research Professor, Computer Science and Engineering & Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

Internet users now rely on a whole arsenal of tools to protect their security and privacy. Experts recommend that computer users install personal firewalls, anti-virus software, spyware blockers, spam filters, cookie managers, and a variety of other tools to keep themselves safe. Users are told to pick hard-to-guess passwords, use a different password at every Web site, and not to write any of their passwords down. They are told to read privacy policies before providing personal information to Web sites, look for lock icons before typing in a credit card number, refrain from opening email attachments from people they don’t know, and even to think twice about opening email attachments from people they do know. With so many do’s and don’ts, it is not surprising that much of this advice is ignored. In this talk I will highlight usability problems that make it difficult for people to protect their privacy and security on the Web, and I will discuss a number of approaches to addressing these problems.

Speaker's Bio

Lorrie Faith Cranor is an Associate Research Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She is director of the CMU Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS). She came to CMU in December 2003 after seven years at AT&T Labs-Research. She is the author of the book Web Privacy with P3P (O'Reilly 2002) and co-editor of the book Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems that People Can Use (O'Reilly 2005). In 2003 she was named one of the top 100 innovators 35 or younger by Technology Review magazine.