Exploring Website Location as a Security Indicator
Der-Yeuan Yu, Elizabeth Stobert, David Basin, Srdjan Capkun

TL;DR
This paper investigates how website location information influences user security decisions, proposing a location-based security indicator and evaluating its impact on user behavior through qualitative and user study methods.
Contribution
It introduces a novel security indicator based on website location and assesses its effectiveness in influencing user decision-making.
Findings
Users are less likely to perform security-sensitive tasks when alerted to location changes.
Website location can serve as an effective security indicator.
Users accept location information as part of security decision-making.
Abstract
Authenticating websites is an ongoing problem for users. Recent proposals have suggested strengthening current server authentication methods by incorporating website location as a comprehensible additional trust factor. In this work, we explore users' acceptance of location information and how it affects decision-making for security and privacy. We conducted a series of qualitative interviews to learn how location can be integrated into users' decision-making for security, and we designed a security indicator to alert the user to changes in website locations. We evaluated our tool in a 44-participant user study and found that users were less likely to perform security-sensitive tasks when alerted to location changes. Our results suggest that website location can be used as an effective indicator for users' security assessments.
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Taxonomy
TopicsPrivacy, Security, and Data Protection · User Authentication and Security Systems · Spam and Phishing Detection
