Using Cartoons to Teach Internet Security

Short Description
Using Cartoons to Teach Internet Security. by. Sukamol Srikwan. Markus Jakobsson. 1. School of Informatics. Indiana University. Bloomington, IN 47406 …

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Content
DIMACS Technical Report 2007-11
July 2007
Using Cartoons to Teach Internet Security
by
Sukamol Srikwan Markus Jakobsson1
School of Informatics
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47406
1Markus Jakobsson is a permanent member of DIMACS. This work was supported by a Microsoft
Trusted Computing grant.
DIMACS is a collaborative project of Rutgers University, Princeton University, AT&T Labs-
Research, Bell Labs, NEC Laboratories America and Telcordia Technologies, as well as affiliate
members Avaya Labs, HP Labs, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Stevens Institute of
Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. DIMACS
was founded as an NSF Science and Technology Center.ABSTRACT
While good user education can hardly secure a system, we believe that poor user education
can put it at serious risk. The current problem of online fraud is exasperated by the fact that
most users make security decisions, such as whether to install a given piece of software or
not, based on a very rudimentary understanding of risk. We describe the design principles
behind SecurityCartoon.com, the first cartoon-based approach aimed at improving the
understanding of risk among typical Internet users. We argue why an approach like ours
is likely to produce better long-term effects than currently practiced educational efforts
with the same general goals. This belief is based on the apparent difference between our
approach and currently used alternatives. At the heart of these differences are the four
guiding principles of our approach: (1) A research driven content selection, according to
which we select educational messages based on user studies; (2) accessibility of the material,
to reach and maintain a large readership; (3) user immersion in the material, based on
repetitions on a theme; and (4) adaptability to a changing threat….