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Kazaa Usability Study
Anonymous Coward writes "We have just finished a study that shows how user interface design flaws allow users on Kazaa to share their personal files without their knowledge. In a laboratory user study, only 2 out of 12 subjects were able to correctly determine that Kazaa was sharing their entire hard drive. We looked at the current Kazaa network and discovered that many users are sharing personal information such as email and data for financial programs such as Microsoft Money. To see if other users on Kazaa were aware of this and taking advantage of users ignorance, we ran a Kazaa client for 24 hours with dummy personal files. During this time, files named "Inbox.dbx" and "Credit Cards.xls" were downloaded from our client by several unique users. The tech report is online, or see our lab web page."
Well, it's not like I don't receive everyone elses personal files through email, courtesy of the Sircam worm.
Since Kazaa is spyware in the first place, what personal information is there to hide?
Also, in a related topic, piloting planes is reserved for those who know what they are doing.
People like you usually repeat two lines ad-nauseum:
.. thats not fair.
1) Haha! What an idiot! They deserved to get taken advantage of!
2) Mother fucking asshole, he took advantage of my mom/sister/father/brother/friend/etc
It's rare to find someone brave enough (or forthright enough) to apply the 'buyer beware' scenario to people he/she cares about. Usually people tend to seperate the kinds of situations their social circle falls into and the kind of situations 'idiots' fall into, into two seperate classes of situations. Really, they are the same, so if you care about anybody enough to not think they are a moron for falling into any given trap, its not really justified to call other people idiots for doing so.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Sorry Judge, I didn't realize I was sharing all those ripped DVD's with the world... whoops!
"Thank you for your credit card number, 'l33tp3t3'."
bull. I ran Napster and Kazaa a few times. I always knew exactly what I was sharing ( 0 files).
I shared videos of me dancing and nobody wanted to download them. It makes me cry every day when I look at the results of my scientific study.
Now we can all get on Kazaa and grab credit card numbers so we can buy porn and cds and dvds and software and computer games and books and even computer games about porn........cause all these things still have to be bought right? its not like i can just get them free through some program......
The only difference is I don't tell my friends they are morons. I think it, but I don't tell them.
In fact I'm unlikely to tell not-friends they are idiots either especially if they are anywhere within striking distance.
Dammit.. if there was one thing that teachers taught it was to reduce your fractions!
1 out of 6
Least that's the way they were with me.
I noticed back in november of last year that most of my friends had kazaa set up to share everything on their hard drives. At the time I was working on a project on the Reformation movement. I was stuck so I typed in 'Reformation' under Documents and I got a couple reports. I got some good facts and I think I got a 90% on the project. I used it for a couple more project and found it helpful on bigger subjects. Why buy Clifs Notes if I can download projects?
So what? Everything is already shared via Echelon file sharing system...
1) Computer software is COMPLICATED.
2) 90% of computer users are IDIOTS.
3) Spyware peddlers are UNETHICAL.
You needed to write a paper to investigate these completely unobvious claims?
Where do I get some of that action?
I want to get some academic funding to investigate whether hot strippers, on average, have big titties!
Just for your own safety, you should be aware that things in your mirror are closer than they appear, not farther.