"My name is my password:" Understanding children's authentication practices

Dhanush Kumar Ratakonda, Tyler French, Jerry Alan Fails

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Children continue to use technology at an increasing rate more and more of which require authentication via usernames and passwords.We seek to understand how children ages 5-11 years old create and use their credentials. We investigate children's username and password understanding and practices from the perspective of both children and adults within the context of three security categories: credential composition (e.g. length of password), performance (e.g. time to enter), and credential mechanisms (e.g; a pattern or characters). We conducted a semi-structured interview with 22 children and an online survey with 33 adult participants (parents and teachers) to determine their practices and involvement in facilitating authentication for their children. Our study illustrates how children have a limited understanding of authentication, and that there are differences between children's and adult's understanding of good authentication and security practices, and what they actually do.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC 2019
Pages501-507
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781450366908
DOIs
StatePublished - 12 Jun 2019
Event18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC 2019 - Boise, United States
Duration: 12 Jun 201915 Jun 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC 2019

Conference

Conference18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBoise
Period12/06/1915/06/19

Keywords

  • Authentication for children
  • Memorability
  • Security strength

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