Research Shows People Ignore Security Alerts Due to Poor Timing

How much attention do people really pay when their computer or browser displays a security warning message box? It depends on what they are doing at the time, it turns out. Researchers from the Brigham Young University conducted a series of studies examining computer users' behavior, and while the findings were not exactly surprising, they provided some insights into how security messages can be tweaked to be more efficient.

Brigham researchers hooked people to equipment monitoring their brain activity and had them perform multiple tasks on a computer. The study showed that people are much more likely to focus on a security warning message if it was displayed right before or after a given task was completed. Such a tendency is explained with our inherently poor multitasking capabilities as human beings.

Interruptions Lower Efficiency

According to the findings of the Brigham Young University study, a significant 74% of all subjects completely ignored the security warning messages when they showed up as the users were about to close a window. Even more people ignored them during video playback. The biggest percentage of individuals , 87 out of every 100 test subjects, paid no attention to security alerts that popped up during information transfer tasks, such as filling in a form.

Researchers believe this issue can be considerably alleviated by shifting security message timing, so that the message boxes appear at times when the user is not actively engaged in some other activity. Examples of such windows of attention-grabbing opportunity are during page or media loading times or after a period of interaction with a website, but before the user is on the brink of leaving it. While those exact points in time are hard to determine, this can serve as a general guideline.

Even though many developers pay little attention to the timing of similar security messages, the Google Chrome team was very impressed with the study and its results. The study’s results led to a collaborative effort between Brigham Young University and Google. Chrome should soon have its cleanup tool popup box timing readjusted so that it shows up at times when the user is least likely to ignore it.