(Recent versions of) TextSecure differ from many other products, in that there 
is no way to *remember* which contacts you have verified. Moxie thinks this is 
a usability improvement, but I think it's a security hole.

I don't know of any product that does this. Even SSH remembers which 
non-verified keys you have implicitly allowed.

I'm not saying it will completely invalidate a study, but it will definitely 
affect things from a user's POV. So, keep it in mind when doing a usability 
study using TextSecure.

X

On 06/03/14 16:27, Christine Corbett Moran wrote:
> The good news is that you don't need a partnership with an academic versed in 
> experiment and data analysis to run one of these.
> 
> The bad news is that it may not generalize between clients.
> 
> But if anyone wants a candidate client to do a sort of study like that I 
> suggest TextSecure =)
> 
> C
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Tony Arcieri <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 
>     On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 4:49 AM, Christine Corbett Moran 
> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 
>         What we'd need to get started is a list of methods we'd want to test, 
> and some comparisons based on those methods to incorporate in the experiment.
> 
> 
>     I'd like to see more studies like the Cryptocat one:
> 
>     https://blog.crypto.cat/2014/01/cryptocat-at-the-openitp-dc-hackathon/
> 
>     The area of the most confusion — to the point where it made the users 
> feel threatened or panicked — was the user information screens (either for a 
> specific buddy or the user themselves). *Though “fingerprint” is widely known 
> by cryptography and security experts, it is, at the end of the day, jargon*. 
> There were several participants who immediately associated “fingerprint” with 
> a negative connotation (i.e., leaving a fingerprint at a crime scene). Their 
> tone was panicked in asking their questions on this issue, and were unsure of 
> why that information needed to be displayed, and if it was even safe to 
> display. There were a handful of users who understood encryption technology 
> at a very basic level who were not confused by the terminology on this page, 
> but were unsure of what to do with this information. 
> 
>     -- 
>     Tony Arcieri
> 
> 

-- 
GPG: 4096R/1318EFAC5FBBDBCE
git://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git

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