We have just finished a study that shows how user interface design flaws
allow users on Kazaa to share their personal files without their
knowledge. In a laboratory user study, only 2 out of 12 subjects were able
to correctly determine that Kazaa was sharing their entire hard drive. We
looked at the current Kazaa network and discovered that many users are
sharing personal information such as email and data for financial programs
such as Microsoft Money.
To see if other users on Kazaa were aware of this and taking advantage of
users ignorance, we ran a Kazaa client for 24 hours with dummy personal
files. During this time, files named "Inbox.dbx" and "Credit Cards.xls"
where downloaded from our client by several unique users.
The tech report can be accessed here:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/shl/papers/kazaa/KazaaUsability.pdf
or from our lab web page at
http://www.hpl.hp.com/shl/
Nathan Good, Information Dynamics Lab, HP Laboratories ngood @hpl.hp.com
1501 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA 1-650-236-4437 [Nathan Good via risks-digest Volume 22, Issue 12]
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