'I Knew It Was Too Good to Be True"

In the U.S., consumers increasingly turn to the internet and mobile apps to complete essential personal transactions, ranging from financial payments to job applications. This shift to digital transactions can create challenges for those without reliable home internet connections or with limited digital literacy by requiring them to submit sensitive information on public computers or on unfamiliar websites. Using interviews with 52 families from high-poverty communities in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., we explore the compounding privacy and security challenges that economically disadvantaged individuals face when navigating online services. We describe the real, perceived, and unknown risks they face as they navigate online transactions with limited technical skills, as well as the strategies and heuristics they employ to minimize these risks. The findings highlight a complex relationship between participants' negative experiences and their general mistrust of sharing data through online channels. We also describe a range of strategies participants use to try and protect their personal information. Based on these findings, we offer design recommendations to inform the creation of educational resources that we will develop in the next phase of this project.

[1]  Richard J. Anderson,et al.  Examining Security and Privacy Research in Developing Regions , 2018, COMPASS.

[2]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Survey Measures of Web-Oriented Digital Literacy , 2005 .

[3]  M. Siegrist,et al.  Perception of Hazards: The Role of Social Trust and Knowledge , 2000, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[4]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Second-Level Digital Divide: Mapping Differences in People's Online Skills , 2001, ArXiv.

[5]  Laura Dianne Stanley,et al.  Beyond Access: Psychosocial Barriers to Computer Literacy Special Issue: ICTs and Community Networking , 2003, Inf. Soc..

[6]  Andreas Vårheim.  Gracious space: Library programming strategies towards immigrants as tools in the creation of social capital , 2011 .

[7]  Beth St. Jean,et al.  As simple as that?: tween credibility assessment in a complex online world , 2015, J. Documentation.

[8]  Shawn Glynn.  Drawing Mental Models. , 1997 .

[9]  Andrew Large,et al.  “Bonded design”: A novel approach to intergenerational information technology design , 2006 .

[10]  Emiliano Lorini,et al.  Computer-Mediated Trust in Self-interested Expert Recommendations , 2017, Cognition Beyond the Brain.

[11]  Rick Wash,et al.  Stories as informal lessons about security , 2012, SOUPS.

[12]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Second-Level Digital Divide: Differences in People's Online Skills , 2002, First Monday.

[13]  Sunny Consolvo,et al.  "...No one Can Hack My Mind": Comparing Expert and Non-Expert Security Practices , 2015, SOUPS.

[14]  Elissa M. Redmiles,et al.  Where is the Digital Divide?: A Survey of Security, Privacy, and Socioeconomics , 2017, CHI.

[15]  A. Baier.  Trust and Antitrust , 1986, Ethics.

[16]  Jiawen Chen,et al.  Trust transfer in social media brand communities: The role of consumer engagement , 2018, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[17]  Patrick Traynor,et al.  Regulators, Mount Up! Analysis of Privacy Policies for Mobile Money Services , 2017, SOUPS.

[18]  Rick Wash,et al.  Identifying patterns in informal sources of security information , 2015, J. Cybersecur..

[19]  Paul T. Jaeger,et al.  The Intersection of Public Policy and Public Access: Digital Divides, Digital Literacy, Digital Inclusion, and Public Libraries , 2012, Public Libr. Q..

[20]  Michael J. Muller,et al.  Participatory design: the third space in HCI , 2002 .

[21]  Aaron D. Shaw,et al.  The Pipeline of Online Participation Inequalities: The Case of Wikipedia Editing , 2018 .

[22]  Priya Kumar,et al.  Librarians as Information Intermediaries: Navigating Tensions Between Being Helpful and Being Liable , 2018, iConference.

[23]  Sandra Streukens,et al.  Comfort your online customer: quality, trust and loyalty on the internet , 2004 .

[24]  L. Jaycox,et al.  Theoretical basis and program design of a school-based mental health intervention for traumatized immigrant children: A collaborative research partnership , 2002, The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research.

[25]  Joseph W. Jerome.  Buying and Selling Privacy: Big Data's Different Burdens and Benefits , 2013 .

[26]  Ye Tian,et al.  Exploring factors influencing Chinese user's perceived credibility of health and safety information on Weibo , 2015, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[27]  Michael Mackert,et al.  Designing e-health interventions for low-health-literate culturally diverse parents: addressing the obesity epidemic. , 2009, Telemedicine journal and e-health : the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association.

[28]  Rick Wash,et al.  Organization Interfaces—collaborative computing General Terms , 2022 .

[29]  Miriam J. Metzger,et al.  Digital Media and Youth: Unparalleled Opportunity and Unprecedented Responsibility , 2008 .

[30]  Robert LaRose,et al.  Internet Self-Efficacy and the Psychology of the Digital Divide , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[31]  Michael Zimmer,et al.  Privacy Attitudes and Data Valuation Among Fitness Tracker Users , 2018, iConference.

[32]  Kyung Kyu Kim,et al.  Initial trust and the adoption of B2C e-commerce: The case of internet banking , 2004, DATB.

[33]  Zinta S. Byrne,et al.  The Psychology of Security for the Home Computer User , 2012, 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

[34]  Andreas Vårheim.  Trust in Libraries and Trust in Most People: Social Capital Creation in the Public Library , 2014, The Library Quarterly.

[35]  Wei Chen,et al.  Social network collaborative filtering framework and online trust factors: A case study on Facebook , 2010, 2010 Fifth International Conference on Digital Information Management (ICDIM).

[36]  J. V. Dijk,et al.  The Deepening Divide: Inequality in the Information Society , 2005 .

[37]  Mary Madden,et al.  Privacy, security, and digital inequality , 2017 .

[38]  Rick Wash,et al.  Too Much Knowledge? Security Beliefs and Protective Behaviors Among United States Internet Users , 2015, SOUPS.

[39]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Trust and Privacy Concern Within Social Networking Sites: A Comparison of Facebook and MySpace , 2007, AMCIS.

[40]  Emiliano Lorini,et al.  Computer-mediated trust in self-interested expert recommendations , 2010, AI & SOCIETY.

[41]  Donna L. Hoffman,et al.  Building consumer trust online , 1999, CACM.

[42]  J. Klayman,et al.  Hypothesis testing in rule discovery: Strategy, structure, and content. , 1989 .

[43]  Jay Chen,et al.  Exploring Internet Security Perceptions and Practices in Urban Ghana , 2014, SOUPS.

[44]  K. Glanz,et al.  The role of behavioral science theory in development and implementation of public health interventions. , 2010, Annual review of public health.

[45]  Vyas Sekar,et al.  Measuring user confidence in smartphone security and privacy , 2012, SOUPS.

[46]  R. Rice,et al.  Comparing internet and mobile phone usage: digital divides of usage, adoption, and dropouts , 2003 .

[47]  David Greathead,et al.  When mental models go wrong: co-occurrences in dynamic, critical systems , 2004, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[48]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Succinct Survey Measures of Web-Use Skills , 2012 .

[49]  Yong Jin Park,et al.  Digital Literacy and Privacy Behavior Online , 2013, Commun. Res..

[50]  Kenneth. A . . Smith.  Americans and Cybersecurity , 2016 .

[51]  Ellen Helsper,et al.  The Compoundness and Sequentiality of Digital Inequality , 2017 .

[52]  Rick Wash,et al.  Influencing mental models of security: a research agenda , 2011, NSPW '11.

[53]  Ricardo Gomez,et al.  The "cool factor" of public access to ICT: Users' perceptions of trust in libraries, telecentres and cybercafés in developing countries , 2010, Inf. Technol. People.

[54]  E. Hargittai.  The Digital Divide and What to Do About It , 2003 .

[55]  Norman M. Sadeh,et al.  Expectation and purpose: understanding users' mental models of mobile app privacy through crowdsourcing , 2012, UbiComp.

[56]  Jørn Braa,et al.  Distributed Development to Enable User Participation: Multilevel design in the HISP network , 2009, Scand. J. Inf. Syst..

[57]  J. Klayman,et al.  Confirmation, Disconfirmation, and Informa-tion in Hypothesis Testing , 1987 .

[58]  Helen Dunford.  Digital literacy and digital inclusion: Information policy and the public library , 2015 .

[59]  Soo Young Rieh.  Credibility and Cognitive Authority of Information , 2010 .

[60]  Jan van Dijk,et al.  The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon , 2000, Inf. Soc..

[61]  Alice E. Marwick,et al.  Privacy, Poverty and Big Data: A Matrix of Vulnerabilities for Poor Americans , 2017 .

[62]  N. Luhmann.  Vertrauen : ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer Komplexität , 1973 .

[63]  I. Rosenstock,et al.  Social Learning Theory and the Health Belief Model , 1988, Health education quarterly.

[64]  Craig W. Trumbo,et al.  The Function of Credibility in Information Processing for Risk Perception , 2003, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[65]  Nancy Nyland.  Digital Literacy and Digital Inclusion: Information Policy and the Public Library , 2015 .

[66]  Cécile Paris,et al.  A survey of trust in social networks , 2013, CSUR.

[67]  유창조.  Naturalistic Inquiry , 2022, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[68]  John B. Horrigan,et al.  Digital Readiness Gaps. , 2016 .