We Ignore Computer Security Warnings Most of the Time

A new study finds that people ignore computer security warnings up to 90% of the time, due to poor timing of the pop up (software security) messages.

Google Chrome engineers and Brigham Young University researchers conducted a study that showed that the time security messages pop up is incredibly important: a security message that appears while people are watching a video, typing a message, uploading files etc, is more than likely going to be disregarded. These times are less effective because of “dual task interference”. In other words, our brains cannot handle multitasking very well.

In the study, 74% of people ignored security messages that appeared while they were on the way to close a web page window; 79% ignored the messages when they were watching a video; 87% ignored the messages while they were uploading files.

For this reason, researchers suggest that developers and others pay attention to the timing of the security warnings. For example, the study found that people paid the most attention to security messages when they popped up in lower dual task times, like after watching a video, or after interacting with a website, or while they were waiting for a page to load.

While timing security warnings like this might seem like common sense, this actually isn’t a priority in the software industry, but as the study shows, it should become.