This research addresses open questions on the interaction of aging, financial security in an information society, and elder perceptions of the risks of digital information technologies. The end technological goal is to improve the design of security and privacy technologies for older Americans. Note that security on the Internet is designed by younger, risk-seeking technologists who are primarily male. Those over 65 who require a secure Internet are by definition older, also risk-averse, rarely technologists, and more often than not female. It is not surprising that there is a mismatch between the mental models of secure system designers and this growing group of users. In terms of method, this research will include an examination of the value of multimedia combined with the scale enabled by traditional surveys. Specifically, the research will evaluate the inclusion of multimedia interactive technologies in terms of enabling inclusion of the nuance previously possible only in smaller scale qualitative work.
The implications of computer security being systematically ill-suited for elders are profound, and improving this mismatch is the broader implication of this work. Never has so much wealth been accessible with such ease by so many predators. Organized crime reaches out from remote jurisdictions, where American law enforcement cannot reach back. The combination of the concentration of wealth among Americans over age 65, the global unsecured network, availability of personally identifiable information used for authentication, increasingly organized online crime, and the disproportionate lack of technical expertise among elders can create a perfect digital storm. Yet this problem is profoundly under-studied. Without computer security technology built to serve elders, these risks cannot be effectively, systematically addressed.
There is a generational divide in information technology. New technologies are overwhelmingly designed by young adults for young adults. Yet a large and increasing percent of the population is over sixty-five. Technologies to protect information (i.e., security and privacy) are built by (and implicitly for) technical young adults. Yet older adults are the richer target for fraud. People over 65 own over one-third of the value of all stocks and over ten percent of the value of all bonds in the entire US. That is, one-third of the value of all the American stock exchanges combined. Never has such wealth been so tenuously protected with such weak security, with the retired owners accessible to a networked world of purveyors of fraud. Improving information protection for elders requires understanding how they perceive of the technology and the information fraudsters seek. To do this, our research team consisted of a gerontologist, a computer scientist in privacy, and an expert in computer security (specifically economics of security and ecrime). The goal of the understanding elders’ perception is to provide useful information in an accessible format to empower older adults’ ability to protect themselves. We found that allegorical information was more useful than technical specification; and that in some cases video was more effective than text. The allegorical videos we developed are available here: Effective access control - www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9m6A4gWKX8 Avoiding keyloggers - www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zHJoZqrCB0 Defeating phishing - www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZQ9pFTCdy4
