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."

Comments

Sircam

[pknut]

Well, it's not like I don't receive everyone elses personal files through email, courtesy of the Sircam worm.

That's OK

[cscx]

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.

Re:this is really disapointing

[SirSlud]

People like you usually repeat two lines ad-nauseum:

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 .. thats not fair.

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.

Unfortunately

[Gerrioholic99]

Sorry Judge, I didn't realize I was sharing all those ripped DVD's with the world... whoops!

RIAA is getting its money back

[Kirby-meister]

"Thank you for your credit card number, 'l33tp3t3'."

Re:RIAA is getting its money back

[marhar]

Good idea! "The tracks on this CD are available for purchase via the KAZAA network. Simply download the songs you like. We'll bill your credit card later."

I Did a Usability Study With P2P Also.

[thedanceman]

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.

Echelon

[herraukuli]

So what? Everything is already shared via Echelon file sharing system...