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

Intelligence of average user?

[Junior J. Junior III]

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.

I think the fact that these people are using Microsoft Money is pretty indicative of the user's intelligence...

this just in

[tps12]

Windows Users Are Idiots, film at 11.

Re:out of the technical journal DUH.

[SirSlud]

> The fact that your post reached Score: 5, Insightful is a casebook example of the -1 to 5 moderation system not working.

I contend that it worked pretty well - only because the obvious trolls are so obvious that the +5 can be dismissed by most useful slashdot reader/posters/moderators.