2008-10-01
Abstract
Study shows users concentrate on getting rid of pop-up boxes as soon as possible rather than reading their contents.
Copyright © 2008 Virus Bulletin
A study in the US has suggested that computer users may largely ignore the pop-up windows that are used by some systems (such as Vista) to warn of unsafe computing use.
In the study, conducted by the Department of Psychology at North Carolina State University, 42 students were asked to rate a number of medical web pages for clutter – a cover story for the real purpose of the experiment which was to observe how they responded to pop-ups. Each student was presented with four pop-up windows which varied from warnings of programs executing or terminating to a flashing pop-up that added a browser status bar.
More than half of the students simply clicked ‘OK’ on the pop-up boxes almost automatically. The fact that their reaction times barely varied for the different types of box indicated that they were not bothering to read the contents. More than 40% said they just wanted to get rid of the box as quickly as possible.
While this was not a statistically significant study, it does raise questions as to the effectiveness of legitimate warning messages as well as highlighting once again a lack of awareness among users who seem happy to click on almost anything without a second thought.
