Privacy and Security Attitudes, Beliefs and Behaviours: Informing Future Tool Design

Abstract

Usable privacy and security has become a significant area of interest for many people in both industry and academia. A better understanding of the knowledge and motivation is an important factor in the design of privacy and security tools. However, users of these tools are a heterogeneous group, and many past studies of user characteristics in the security and privacy domain have looked only at a small subset of factors to define differences between groups of users.

The goal of this research is to critically look at the difference between people, their opinions and habits when it comes to issues of privacy and security. To address this goal, 32 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted and analyzed to look at the heterogenous nature of this community.

The participant’s attitudes and actions around the dimensions of knowledge about tools and of motivation for self-protection were used to cluster participants. The traits of these participant clusters are used to create a set of privacy and security personas, or prototypical privacy and security tool users. These personas are a tool for incorporating a broader understanding of the diversity of users into the design of privacy and security tools.