Influence of user choice on perception of wireless connection genuineness and security

People’s perceptions of the security and bona fides of urban pervasive services, and their trust in them, do not necessarily match the reality of a given service. Taking WiFi hotspots as an example, this study investigated the effects on users’ perceptions of a service’s genuineness and security of allowing the user to choose the message used in the Physical Interlock device association protocol. Users were significantly more confident in the genuineness of the wireless network and the ability of PI to defend them against a Man-in-the-Middle attack if they contributed directly to the creation of the message. However, user creation of the entire message did not significantly affect user perceptions compared to user creation of half the message combined with system generation of the other half. Thus, messages that combine partial user generation with partial system generation may give people confidence in secure ad-hoc associations between their personal devices and urban pervasive services, while ensuring a known lower bound on message strength.