Session 8D: Usability Meets Privacy

Authors, Creators & Presenters: Tongxin Wei (Nankai University), Ding Wang (Nankai University), Yutong Li (Nankai University), Yuehuan Wang (Nankai University)

PAPER
"Who Is Trying To Access My Account?"

Risk-based authentication (RBA) is gaining popularity and RBA notifications promptly alert users to protect their accounts from unauthorized access. Recent research indicates that users can identify legitimate login notifications triggered by themselves. However, little attention has been paid to whether RBA notifications triggered by non-account holders can effectively raise users' awareness of crises and prevent potential attacks. In this paper, we invite 258 online participants and 15 offline participants to explore users' perceptions, reactions, and expectations for three types of RBA notifications (i.e., RBA notifications triggered by correct passwords, incorrect passwords, and password resets). The results show that over 90% of participants consider RBA notifications important. Users do not show significant differences in their feelings and behaviors towards the three types of RBA notifications, but they have distinct expectations for each type. Most participants feel suspicious, nervous, and anxious upon receiving the three types of RBA notifications not triggered by themselves. Consequently, users immediately review the full content of the notification. 46% of users suspect that RBA notifications might be phishing attempts, while categorizing them as potential phishing attacks or spam may lead to ineffective account protection. Despite these suspicions, 65% of users still log into their accounts to check for suspicious activities and take no further action if no abnormalities are found. Additionally, the current format of RBA notifications fails to gain users' trust and meet their expectations. Our findings indicate that RBA notifications need to provide more detailed information about suspicious access, offer additional security measures, and clearly explain the risks involved. Finally, we offer five design recommendations for RBA notifications to better mitigate potential risks and enhance account security.

ABOUT NDSS
The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security. The target audience includes those interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system security, with a focus on actual system design and implementation. A major goal is to encourage and enable the Internet community to apply, deploy, and advance the state of available security technologies.

Our thanks to the Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium for publishing their Creators, Authors and Presenter’s superb NDSS Symposium 2025 Conference content on the Organizations' YouTube Channel.

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Session 8D: Usability Meets Privacy

Authors, Creators & Presenters: Jingwen Yan (Clemson University), Song Liao (Texas Tech University), Mohammed Aldeen (Clemson University), Luyi Xing (Indiana University Bloomington), Danfeng (Daphne) Yao (Virginia Tech), Long Cheng (Clemson University)

PAPER
SKILLPoV: Towards Accessible And Effective Privacv Notice For Amazon Alexa Skills

Despite the popularity and many convenient features of Amazon Alexa, concerns about privacy risks to users are rising since many Alexa voice-apps (called skills) may collect user data during the interaction with Alexa devices. Informing users about data collection in skills is essential for addressing their privacy concerns. However, the constrained interfaces of Alexa pose a challenge to effective privacy notices, where currently Alexa users can only access privacy policies of skills over the Web or smartphone apps. This in particular creates a challenge for visually impaired users to make informed privacy decisions. In this work, we propose the concept of Privacy Notice over Voice, an accessible and inclusive mechanism to make users aware of the data practices of Alexa skills through the conversational interface: for each skill, we will generate a short and easily understandable privacy notice and play it to users at the beginning of the skill in voice. We first conduct a user study involving 52 smart speaker users and 21 Alexa skill developers to understand their attitudes toward data collection and the Privacy Notice over Voice mechanism. 92.3% of participants liked the design of Privacy Notice over Voice and 70.2% of participants agreed that such mechanism provides better accessibility and readability than traditional privacy policies for Alexa users. Informed by our user study results, we design and develop a tool named SKILLPoV (Skill's Privacy Notice over Voice) to automatically generate a reference implementation of Privacy Notice over Voice through static code analysis and instrumentation. With comprehensive evaluation, we demonstrate the effectiveness of SKILLPoV in capturing data collection (91.3% accuracy and 96.4% completeness) from skill code, generating concise and accurate privacy notice content using ChatGPT, and instrumenting skill code with the new privacy notice mechanism without altering the original functionality. In particular, SKILLPoV receives positive and encouraging feedback after real-world testing conducted by skill developers.

ABOUT NDSS
The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security. The target audience includes those interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system security, with a focus on actual system design and implementation. A major goal is to encourage and enable the Internet community to apply, deploy, and advance the state of available security technologies.

Our thanks to the Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium for publishing their Creators, Authors and Presenter’s superb NDSS Symposium 2025 Conference content on the Organizations' YouTube Channel.

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The post NDSS 2025 – SKILLPoV: Towards Accessible And Effective Privacv Notice For Amazon Alexa Skills appeared first on Security Boulevard.