We are thrilled to announce that our paper has been accepted for presentation at the twentieth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2024). Congratulations to Lachlan-kun and Hasegawa-san!

Lachlan Moore, Tatsuya Mori, Ayako Hasegawa, “Negative Effects of Social Triggers on User Security and Privacy Behaviors,” Proceedings of the twentieth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2024), Aug 2024 (accepted) (acceptance rate: 33/156=21.1%)

Overview
People often make decisions influenced by those around them. Previous studies have shown that users frequently adopt security practices based on advice from others and have proposed collaborative and community-based approaches to enhance user security behaviors.

In this paper, we focused on the negative effects of social triggers and investigated whether users’ risky behaviors are socially triggered. We conducted an online survey to understand the triggers for risky behaviors and the sharing practices associated with these behaviors. Our findings revealed that a significant percentage of participants experienced social triggers before engaging in risky behaviors. Moreover, we found that these socially triggered risky behaviors are more likely to be shared with others, creating negative chains of risky behaviors.

Our results suggest the need for more efforts to reduce the negative social effects on user security and privacy behaviors. We propose specific approaches to mitigate these effects and enhance overall user security.