Re: another question about the average user

Martiza,

I tend to agree with you here.  Further, I suspect many wander into this 
territory without really thinking too much about it.

Would you trust the computers at your local library rather than those at 
the internet cafe?

How about the free internet terminal in the hotel lobby - there for you to 
use to "check your mail!"?

Regards,
Tim Hahn

Internet: hahnt@us.ibm.com
Internal: Timothy Hahn/Durham/IBM@IBMUS
phone: 919.224.1565     tie-line: 8/687.1565
fax: 919.224.2530




Maritza Johnson <maritzaj@cs.columbia.edu> 
Sent by: public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org
01/22/07 12:23 PM

To
W3 Work Group <public-wsc-wg@w3.org>
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Subject
Re: another question about the average user







Hello all,

I've noticed when talking about use cases we're sometimes inclined to 
leave out the case of a user conducting personal/sensitive transactions on 
a public terminal. Most say we don't need to include the case of users on 
a shared/public machine because people don't carry out sensitive 
transactions on them ( and it hasn't been from just one person, I've heard 
it from a number of people in the past few months). As security minded 
people we know not to do this, but I really don't think this is common 
knowledge.

 I'd like to argue that the average user does not see a difference between 
the internet as they access it on their personal machine, and the internet 
as they access it from a shared machine. I haven't seen any data which 
supports either side, I'm making this claim completely based on my own 
observations. 

Has anyone seen any work that has explored this question?  If not, I think 
it'd be interesting to add it to the user study for getting a better idea 
of the average user. 

Questions to add might be:
- Would you carry out this transaction at an Internet cafe? Why/Why not?
- Choose the answer that fits:
If you checked your bank statement at an internet cafe you would
A) Close the window afterward using the X  ( might not actually end the 
session)
B) Close the browser from the menu
C) Log out on the bank's web page then close the browser when finished
D) I wouldn't do this





- Maritza

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~maritzaj/