People Ignore Software Security Warnings Up To 90% of the Time, Says Study (phys.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A new study from BYU, in collaboration with Google Chrome engineers, finds the status quo of warning messages appearing haphazardly -- while people are typing, watching a video, uploading files, etc. -- results in up to 90 percent of users disregarding them. Researchers found these times are less effective because of "dual task interference," a neural limitation where even simple tasks can't be simultaneously performed without significant performance loss. Or, in human terms, multitasking. For example, 74 percent of people in the study ignored security messages that popped up while they were on the way to close a web page window. Another 79 percent ignored the messages if they were watching a video. And a whopping 87 percent disregarded the messages while they were transferring information, in this case, a confirmation code. For example, Jenkins, Vance and BYU colleagues Bonnie Anderson and Brock Kirwan found that people pay the most attention to security messages when they pop up in lower dual task times such as: after watching a video, waiting for a page to load, or after interacting with a website. For part of the study, researchers had participants complete computer tasks while an fMRI scanner measured their brain activity. The experiment showed neural activity was substantially reduced when security messages interrupted a task, as compared to when a user responded to the security message itself. The BYU researchers used the functional MRI data as they collaborated with a team of Google Chrome security engineers to identify better times to display security messages during the browsing experience.

Comments

Software Security Warnings:

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Check Engine Light" of the computer world.

Re:Software Security Warnings:

[Z00L00K]

Yup - the engine is still there.

That's an easy one.

[EzInKy]

There are just way too many of them and they are simply too hard for a normal user to evaluate whether the risk is truly severe or just another attempt of somebody to fleece them.

Health care example:

Monitor shows the patient is in asystole. On assessment the patient is alert, talking, and in no apparent distress. Diagnosis is it is the equipment, not the patient, who disturbed the night's routine. Outcome? You lecture the patient for exceeding the devices operating parameters and tell him/her to quit moving and perspiring so that the monitoring devices may correctly interpret typical human norms.