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

Do they really ignore them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I get various security errors/warnings occasionally. Usually they are informing me that security that I did not care about is not present. For example, a warning about a self signed cert on a website that I wouldn't mind using over plain text: that still more secure than plain old http, so I click off the warning. If it is a site that I normally trust and give personal information to (like log in), I don't mind using it when the security is broken, but I won't hand over private data. Continuing despite a warning is not necessarily ignoring it.

Re:Do they really ignore them?

[ruir]

It is far more serious than being clunky...many are unnecessarily intrusive. Why should a warning steal the keyboard focus, specially while I am using it? Why could it not be a floating warning only? If some non fatal errors where not seen by the user as a nuisance to be dealt with, maybe more "brain power" could go into processing them?

Re:Do they really ignore them?

[Mr D from 63]

This says they ignore the warning 90% of the time, but the article says 90% of users ignore some warnings. Those are two different things. If you craft a study to show warnings that resemble the types of pop-ups crafted to look like warnings that we condition ourselves to ignore, the result is not surprising. If they are on a computer they are familiar with, and the warnings come from their known anti-virus software, the result would likely be different. Basically, people don't trust what they are unfamiliar with.

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.

Re:That's an easy one.

[DNS-and-BIND]

You laugh, but damn that is shockingly accurate. "Change your behavior so the software works right" used to be absurd, but today it is apparently the default response from support. Remember Apple's "you're holding it wrong" debacle?

It's because 90% of security warnings are rubbish

[El Cubano]

In my experience, 90% of security warnings are rubbish. For example, I recall when UAC came to Windows Vista. I don't ever recall clicking deny/cancel/no (or whatever it was) with the possible exception of a situation like "oops, I meant to click the executable right next to that one."

Same deal with Java applets. My bank uses a Java applet for depositing checks. I get a warning from the browser every single time, despite selecting the "always trust applets from this publisher" (or something like that option).

Of course, there are lots of software packages with instructions like "Step 1: Disable your antivirus." or, worse, "Step 1: If you get any security warning dialogs just click to accept them."

In fact, I've never encountered a single person who can actually point to an occasion where a security dialog alerted them to a real threat that was then neutralized. Even worse, one of the more common warnings (the untrusted SSL certificate/issuer) has confused people even more into thinking that "red address bar means not secure and green lock means secure", when in fact your browser's trust of the certificate's issuer has exactly zero impact on how secure the connection is. We've been conditioned to treat all these warnings as noise. Incidentally, people ignore speed limit signs at least 90% of the time for exactly the same reason: we've been taught that they're meaningless.

It's because you can't right now.

[thedarb]

You have your documents up, half written, spread sheets with data you need for on-call, a long running backup in a window you forgot to run in Screen or tmux, and any other number of things that mean you can't reboot right now. Especially if it's going to be a reboot that says "don't turn off your computer, we're messing with shit for 30 minutes." We have boss' breathing down our necks for productivity, there's no time to reboot and wait.

Besides, it might make me lose my place when browsing imgur. Fuck that! :)

"Hey, watch this!"

[PopeRatzo]

People ignore all sorts of warnings. It's how we do. There are still people smoking when every single pack of cigarettes they buy has a big sign that says, "These motherfuckers will kill you dead, dummy, and in a really horrible way". What was the last time anyone "closed cover before striking"? A Texas man sees a sign that says, "No Swimming - Alligators." He immediately says, "Man, fuck that alligator", jumps in the water and is instantly eaten by an alligator.

http://www.unilad.co.uk/video/...

Chinese-made fireworks have a big-ass label (in English) that says, "Set on ground, light fuse and GET AWAY". Did that stop this guy from putting one in his pants and then blowing himself up? No sir, it did not. Because for human beings, warnings are really just dares.

https://youtu.be/8Yagjf5B2tw

Developers are at fault

[mvdwege]

This is all the developers' fault. They are so fucking lazy that they think throwing up a dialog is a solution to the problem. After all, if the user clicks on it, they assented, right?

Microsoft is by far the worst offender, but they are not alone. And this abdication of responsibility by programmers has trained the users to just blindly click away warnings. And they are right: 99% of the time they are bullshit, a symptom of a problem the developers should have fixed.