Creating Better Malware Warnings Through Psychology

msm1267 writes "Generic malware warnings that alert computer users to potential trouble are largely ineffective and often ignored. Researchers at Cambridge University, however, have proposed a change to the status quo, believing instead that warnings should be re-architected to include concrete, specific warnings that are not technical and rely less on fear than current alerts."

Comments

Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

The fake warnings that get people to click on them will just copy the wording and format of the new warnings and use those to entice people to "click here to avert catastrophe".

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what the article said. I was afraid to download the paper linked because it occurred to me that it might have been one of the very malware warnings they were talking about since they said "Reading this May Harm Your Computer: The Psychology of Malware Warnings".

Preeety clever guys, but I ain't gonna let y'all pull a fast one on me

Re:Waste of Time

[Pope]

Maybe you should read about this one weird computer security tip discovered by a mom. Malware writers hate her!

specific warnings that are not technical

[kruach aum]

If you click this link you will literally want to kill yourself like that time you thought you'd pulled your underwear all the way down but instead re-enacted the slicing frame scene from Cube but with poop

If you click this link you will be tricked into being tricked into giving Russians money to make a non-existent problem not go away, like that time you bought a can opener because you chipped a tooth opening a beer bottle and then never used it

If you click this link you will experience the mental equivalent of three elephant births through a human sized vagina worth of pain over the course of a week and a half