<h1 class="headline">Mitigating Personal Information Exposure on The Web</h1>
  <section class="content">
    <h1 class="header">Content</h1>
    <ol>
      <li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
      <li><a href="#Users">Account access caused by users</a></li>
      <ul>
        <li><a href="#Users1">2.1</a></li>
        <li><a href="#Users2">2.2</a></li>
        <li><a href="#Users3">2.3</a></li>
      </ul>
      <li><a href="#Company">Account access through company systems</a>
        <ul>
          <li><a href="#Company1">3.1</a></li>
          <li><a href="#Company2">3.2</a></li>
        </ul>
      <li><a href="#Graphical">Graphical Passwords</a></li>
      <li><a href="#Conclusion">Conclusion</a></li>
      <li><a href="#ref">Reference List</a></li>
    </ol>
  </section>
  <main>
    <h2 id="intro">Introduction</h2>
    <p>The topic that will be discussed in depth is password security.
      This is because there are many cases which show that there has been a lack of
      proper password security, leading to a significant amount of cases where people
      have been hacked or had personal information leaked on to the web. I will base
      this review on issues preventing increased password security and then discussing
      methods or solutions for the issues.</p>
    <h2 id="Users">Account access caused by users</h2>
    <p id="Users1">Many users cause their own information to be be leaked due to minimal
      effort put in their own password security. Sometimes the issue comes from
      being uneducated about cyber security. One case states that this is a more
      occurring issue with elderly people (Pfleeger, 2010, p.597). This is
      because information about technology has changed and developed a lot
      over the years. Pfleeger also argues that people know of how easily
      password breaching can happen and the consequences, however they do not
      want to put the extra effort in to take accurate measures. Examples of
      this would be situations such as using the same password for multiple
      websites; not filling in optional security questions and not making a
      complex password. Poor protection measures like the ones stated above
      can cause someone to hack even the higher security websites by stealing
      information from lower security websites that may have similar
      information or passwords stored on them.
    </p>
    <p id="Users2">(Pfleeger p.598) He discusses a possible solution for the lack of people
      implementing good e-safety. It is to teach kids early and then trust them to
      do it on their own. When this was practices in public, a report from ofsted
      said “the provision for e-safety was outstanding” and that it helped kids gain
      good security skills from a young age. It also helped them to practice this in
      unsupervised situations. This approach would be more likely to provide better
      results as opposed to making it compulsory for the public to practice correct
      protection measures. This is because it could have a negative effect on people
      in ways such as removing freedom from the public.
    </p>
    <p id="Users3">One study came up with a method to deal with situations such as password
      reuse (Jeffrey L. Jenkins 2013, p.196). He came up with a hypothesis using
      just-in-time fear appeals. This states that if password reuse is being
      detected, a just-in-time fear appeal will pop up to scare the user into taking
      the time and effort to make a different and more secure password. Jenkins also
      released his findings which states that 88.41% of users made their password
      unique after receiving a just-in-time fear appeal. An approach like this would
      be likely to affect the section of the public that does not care too much
      about password protection or people who procrastinate as it signifies how
      important making a secure password is and that you can be hacked at any time.
    </p>
    <h2 id="Company">Account access through company systems</h2>
    <p id="Company1">Other Studies argue that it is not always the users fault. Some systems are
      built in a way that makes it easy for a hacker to gain access. One study
      (Gauvin, verse 1) discusses about how easy it is to use “forgotten password”
      to gain access to an account. If a hacker uses the forgotten password link
      that a website would have, there would be security questions which could be
      something such as “what is your mother’s maiden name?”. They could find this
      information through places such as social media where a person can find
      people’s relationships, find out their mother and their maiden name. Doing
      this would give them access to their account with minimal effort.
    </p>
    <p id="Company2">Gauvin presents an invention (verse 15-16) that considers social media and
      other methods of access to your information when making an account. This means
      that when making security questions it notifies the user of the level or risk
      based on the amount of information available about the user on the web. Based
      on this, it will take actions such as notifying the user through another
      method, requesting more verification or even blocking the forgotten password
      transaction. This idea for an invention would make a user’s accounts more
      protected against other hacking methods, such as making phone calls to the
      company, that require information they could easily access through other
      sources on the internet.
    </p>
    <h2 id="Graphical">Graphical passwords</h2>
    <p>One method that can improve password security is graphical passwords.
      A graphical password is an authentication system where the user selects from
      images in a certain sequence presented by an interface. However there is a
      disagreement in the community on whether graphical passwords are better than
      normal passwords where you type in characters. One source
      (Lashkari, et al., 2009, p.145) states that graphical password schemes are
      more vulnerable to shoulder surfing than alphanumeric text passwords. Shoulder
      surfing is a social engineering tactic where someone spies on a person
      inputting important information such as passwords or ID. Another article
      argues that graphical passwords are better than alphanumeric passwords.
      This article researches how easy it is for people to memorise graphical
      passwords compared to alphanumeric and how secure it is against shoulder
      surfing. There was a laboratory experiment where 20 participants had to
      shoulder surf basic passwords vs PassFace (Tari, et al., p.56) with mouse
      and PassFace with a keyboard, which is a graphical password interface.
      Tari shows evidence of the experiment (p.62) in the form of a table suggesting
      that Passface with a mouse is the most memorable on average while dictionary
      and non-dictionary alphanumeric passwords are easier to hack than PassFace.
    </p>
    <h2 id="Conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
    <p>To sum up the discussion above, there are many ways for hackers to get into a
      user’s account however, more methods and inventions for systems are coming
      out. Teaching kids proper e-safety would seem to be a very good method to
      mitigate personal exposure but only for long term as it does not affect the
      current adults in society. Graphical passwords also seems like it could be a
      major help but more evidence is required before justifying the usage of it.
      This is because of the amount of effort the user will put into taking accurate
      measures. The methods would need to be in a version where it is simple and
      efficient for any user, to reach this part of the public that put minimal
      effort into security.</p>
    <h2 id="ref">References</h2>