Webcam Covering As Planned Behavior
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CHI 2018 Paper CHI 2018, April 21–26, 2018, Montréal, QC, Canada Webcam Covering as Planned Behavior Dominique Machuletz Stefan Laube Rainer Böhme University of Münster University of Münster University of Innsbruck Münster, Germany Münster, Germany Innsbruck, Austria [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT A particular threat related to sensor data is the unauthorized Most of today’s laptops come with an integrated webcam video capture through webcams. If attackers can control placed above the screen to enable video conferencing. Due to webcams remotely, they may exploit highly sensitive video the risk of webcam spying attacks, some laptop users seem to footage, which can cause serious harm to users. Some reported be concerned about their privacy and seek protection by cover attacks on webcams were performed by private attackers, who ing the webcam. This paper is the first to investigate personal threatened users to publish footage unless they pay a ransom characteristics and beliefs of users with and without webcam (e. g., [18]). Beyond private attackers, firms might be interested covers by applying the Theory of Planned Behavior. We record in spying on their own employees through webcams [17]. Also, the privacy behavior of 180 users, develop a path model, and it is conceivable that governments spy on their citizens [47]. analyze it by applying Partial Least Squares. The analysis All such attacks are usually performed through Remote Admin indicates that privacy concerns do not significantly influence istration Tools (RATs) that provide unobtrusive access to com users’ decision to use a webcam cover. Rather, this behav puting devices largely for malicious purposes [11]. Famous ior is influenced by users’ attitudes, social environment, and examples for RATs are Blackshades [20] and Dark-Comet [19]. perceived control over protecting privacy. Developers should For instance, such software was used by an attacker who spied take this as a lesson to design privacy enhancing technologies on the Miss Teen of the USA and other women, threatening which are convenient, verifiably effective and endorsed by them to publish the footage [18]. Although the overall risk of peers. spying attacks is deemed relatively small, many users seem to be concerned about falling victims to such attacks [45, 42]. ACM Classification Keywords There are several ways to self-protect from webcam spying. K.4.1. Computers and Society: Public Policy Issues—Privacy; On the software level, users employ tools that regularly check H.5.m. Information Interfaces and Presentation (e. g. HCI): for spyware. On the Operating System (OS) level, they may Miscellaneous uninstall drivers for the built-in webcam. On the Basic Input Output System (BIOS) level, it is in some cases possible to Author Keywords deactivate the functionality of the webcam altogether [22]. Yet, Webcam cover; privacy; usability; Theory of Planned all of these measures require at least some computer literacy Behavior (TPB); Partial Least Squares (PLS); field study. and thus cannot be adopted by inexperienced users. Besides, such measures are fairly inconvenient for users who, e. g., INTRODUCTION regularly participate in video conferences. To circumvent these The use of modern information technology (IT) comes with issues, users may adjust the hardware of the computing device diverse privacy implications. Today’s mobile devices are by sticking a piece of tape on the webcam lens, or by attaching equipped with various powerful sensors and can store and a commercial webcam cover.1 While certainly a pretty basic forward large amounts of data at low cost. Several studies form of human-machine interaction, the use of webcam covers investigate data privacy risks regarding sensors, such as ac is intuitive to users, as its effectiveness is verifiable without celerometers [44], or biometric sensors [16]. Data privacy is requiring special skills or knowledge. Moreover, the use of defined as an individual’s ability to decide which personal data webcam covers is often observable. This has two implications is accessible to third parties [50]. If computing devices collect for our study. First, the decision to cover a webcam has a personal data and forward it without explicit consent, users’ social component. Users must consider the social acceptance data privacy is violated. Sensor data is especially sensitive to to peers, and continuous use may itself influence adoption by privacy violations, as they may reveal intimate information peers. Second, the observability enables us to measure actual about users’ personal lives. privacy behavior instead of self-reported behavior. Our results Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or may inform fundamental research on privacy behavior as well classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed as the design of usable privacy protection mechanisms. for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the Following up on our initial exploratory study [37], this study author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or contributes a systematic analysis of factors that lead laptop republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. users to cover their webcam. Specifically, we intend to over CHI 2018, April 21–26, 2018, Montreal, QC, Canada come the two major deficiencies of the prior work, namely: © 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. 1 ISBN 978-1-4503-5620-6/18/04. $15.00 Examples for patented commercial covers: [23], [15], [27], [31], [8]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173754 Paper 180 Page 1 CHI 2018 Paper CHI 2018, April 21–26, 2018, Montréal, QC, Canada (1) poor framing of questions, which resulted in weak relia find that less than half of their sample notices when the indi bility scores and model fits, and (2) the missing evaluation of cator is activated while sitting in front of a computing device. users’ concern and perception regarding spying attacks on web Additional interviews reveal that 13% of the participants are cams, which lead to incomplete results on users’ motivations unaware of the fact that their webcam can be remotely con for covering their webcam. By overcoming these shortcom trolled. When participants are asked to express their concerns ings, we intend to examine the reasons for users’ decisions to about possible attacks, many state that they would be afraid cover their webcam or not. Our specific research question is: of intimate details being exposed to the public. Also, many participants claim that they would immediately cover their Which factors influence users to protect their privacy by webcam if the indicator light turns on unexpectedly. The covering their laptop webcam? authors conclude that webcam indicator lights have limited In order to answer this question, it is suggestive to build on effectiveness, highlighting the need for better designed privacy established theory which is proven to explain similar types of indicators which can enable users to self-protect when notic behaviors. We chose to apply the Theory of Planned Behavior ing a potential attack. The work by Mirzamohammadi and (TPB). Developed by Fishbein and Ajzen [21, 3], TPB has be Sani [38] presents a solution for trustworthy sensor notifica come a cornerstone of many works in the behavioral sciences. tions. These authors address concerns about attacks on various The theory postulates that individuals’ behavior is mainly in sensors of mobile devices by implementing a system which fluenced by their attitudes towards it, as well as their subjective provides users with immediate feedback when sensors, such norms and perceived behavioral control of performing this be as the microphone or camera, are being used by applications. havior. In the domain of data privacy, there exist studies that To ensure that users notice the indicator, they not only use investigate these factors in isolation (e. g., [48],[6],[12]), while the devices’ LED, but also the vibrating motor and display as others specifically demonstrate that TPB can explain users’ warnings of potential attacks. privacy protection behavior (e. g., [36], [32], [52]). Thus, we We are only aware of one paper [37] which specifically ad suggest that this theory is also suitable for analyzing users’ dresses webcam covering as a means to self-protect against decision to cover their webcam. The TPB’s constructs allow webcam spying attacks. Using bivariate statistical methods, us to develop a latent factor path model which we can test sta the authors find that laptop users who state that webcam covers tistically. Required data was collected in the course of a field are a useful and practical protective measure are significantly study, where we recorded laptop users’ attitudes by standard more likely to actually cover their webcam. This suggests that ized questionnaires while checking their laptops for a webcam users’ attitudes towards webcam covering has some impact, cover. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to but the interaction with other factors remains elusive. present robust results about the relationship between users’ personal characteristics and their privacy behavior. Overall, the reviewed studies conclude that users need better education about the potential risk of webcam spying. Yet, the LITERATURE REVIEW studies do not precisely investigate if concerns about this risk We summarize the existing research on users’ perceptions cause users to actually adopt self-protection, or if other factors, regarding webcam spying attacks before we review studies on such as those suggested by the TPB, explain protection behav factors influencing users’ general online privacy behaviors to ior. Our study closes this gap by systematically investigating motivate our theoretical and measurement approach.