The Role of Social Influence in Security Feature Adoption

Social influence is key in technology adoption, but its role in security-feature adoption is unique and remains unclear. Here, we analyzed how three Facebook security features' Login Approvals, Login Notifications, and Trusted Contacts-diffused through the social networks of 1.5 million people. Our results suggest that social influence affects one's likelihood to adopt a security feature, but its effect varies based on the observability of the feature, the current feature adoption rate among a potential adopter's friends, and the number of distinct social circles from which those feature-adopting friends originate. Curiously, there may be a threshold higher than which having more security feature adopting friends predicts for higher adoption likelihood, but below which having more feature-adopting friends predicts for lower adoption likelihood. Furthermore, the magnitude of this threshold is modulated by the attributes of a feature-features that are more noticeable (Login Approvals, Trusted Contacts) have lower thresholds.

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