A Comparison of American and German Folk Models of Home Computer Security

Although many security solutions exist, home computer systems are vulnerable against different type of attacks. The main reason is that users are either not motivated to use these solutions or not able to correctly use them. In order to make security software more usable and hence computers more secure, we re-ran the study by Wash about “Folk Models of Home Computer Security” in Germany. We classified the different mental models in eleven folk models. Eight of the identified folk models are similar to the models Wash presented. We describe each folk model and illustrate how users think about computer security.