Peeling the onion’s user experience layer: Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser

Kevin Gallagher; Sameer Patil; Brendan Dolan-Gavitt; Damon McCoy; Nasir Memon

doi:10.1145/3243734.3243803

Peeling the onion’s user experience layer: Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser

Kevin Gallagher, Sameer Patil, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, Damon McCoy, Nasir Memon

Center for Cyber Security

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

The strength of an anonymity system depends on the number of users. Therefore, User eXperience (UX) and usability of these systems is of critical importance for boosting adoption and use. To this end, we carried out a study with 19 non-expert participants to investigate how users experience routine Web browsing via the Tor Browser, focusing particularly on encountered problems and frustrations. Using a mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approach to study one week of naturalistic use of the Tor Browser, we uncovered a variety of UX issues, such as broken Web sites, latency, lack of common browsing conveniences, differential treatment of Tor traffic, incorrect geolocation, operational opacity, etc. We applied this insight to suggest a number of UX improvements that could mitigate the issues and reduce user frustration when using the Tor Browser.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	CCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Pages	1290-1305
Number of pages	16
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450356930
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3243734.3243803
State	Published - Oct 15 2018
Event	25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018 - Toronto, Canada Duration: Oct 15 2018 → …

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
ISSN (Print)	1543-7221

Other

Other	25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018
Country	Canada
City	Toronto
Period	10/15/18 → …

Keywords

Anonymity
Privacy
Tor
Tor Browser
UX
Usability
User experience

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software
Computer Networks and Communications

Access to Document

10.1145/3243734.3243803

Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Peeling the onion’s user experience layer: Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this

Gallagher, K., Patil, S., Dolan-Gavitt, B., McCoy, D., & Memon, N. (2018). Peeling the onion’s user experience layer: Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser. In CCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (pp. 1290-1305). (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3243734.3243803

Peeling the onion’s user experience layer : Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser. / Gallagher, Kevin; Patil, Sameer; Dolan-Gavitt, Brendan; McCoy, Damon; Memon, Nasir.

CCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Association for Computing Machinery, 2018. p. 1290-1305 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Gallagher, K, Patil, S, Dolan-Gavitt, B, McCoy, D & Memon, N 2018, Peeling the onion’s user experience layer: Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser. in CCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1290-1305, 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018, Toronto, Canada, 10/15/18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3243734.3243803

Gallagher K, Patil S, Dolan-Gavitt B, McCoy D, Memon N. Peeling the onion’s user experience layer: Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser. In CCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Association for Computing Machinery. 2018. p. 1290-1305. (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security). https://doi.org/10.1145/3243734.3243803

Gallagher, Kevin ; Patil, Sameer ; Dolan-Gavitt, Brendan ; McCoy, Damon ; Memon, Nasir. / Peeling the onion’s user experience layer : Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser. CCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Association for Computing Machinery, 2018. pp. 1290-1305 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security).

@inproceedings{846575911e0c4557874d4ceea3109153,

title = "Peeling the onion{\textquoteright}s user experience layer: Examining naturalistic use of the Tor Browser",

abstract = "The strength of an anonymity system depends on the number of users. Therefore, User eXperience (UX) and usability of these systems is of critical importance for boosting adoption and use. To this end, we carried out a study with 19 non-expert participants to investigate how users experience routine Web browsing via the Tor Browser, focusing particularly on encountered problems and frustrations. Using a mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approach to study one week of naturalistic use of the Tor Browser, we uncovered a variety of UX issues, such as broken Web sites, latency, lack of common browsing conveniences, differential treatment of Tor traffic, incorrect geolocation, operational opacity, etc. We applied this insight to suggest a number of UX improvements that could mitigate the issues and reduce user frustration when using the Tor Browser.",

keywords = "Anonymity, Privacy, Tor, Tor Browser, UX, Usability, User experience",

author = "Kevin Gallagher and Sameer Patil and Brendan Dolan-Gavitt and Damon McCoy and Nasir Memon",

year = "2018",

month = oct,

day = "15",

doi = "10.1145/3243734.3243803",

language = "English (US)",

series = "Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",

pages = "1290--1305",

booktitle = "CCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security",

note = "25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018 ; Conference date: 15-10-2018",

}

TY - GEN

T1 - Peeling the onion’s user experience layer

T2 - 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018

AU - Gallagher, Kevin

AU - Patil, Sameer

AU - Dolan-Gavitt, Brendan

AU - McCoy, Damon

AU - Memon, Nasir

PY - 2018/10/15

Y1 - 2018/10/15

N2 - The strength of an anonymity system depends on the number of users. Therefore, User eXperience (UX) and usability of these systems is of critical importance for boosting adoption and use. To this end, we carried out a study with 19 non-expert participants to investigate how users experience routine Web browsing via the Tor Browser, focusing particularly on encountered problems and frustrations. Using a mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approach to study one week of naturalistic use of the Tor Browser, we uncovered a variety of UX issues, such as broken Web sites, latency, lack of common browsing conveniences, differential treatment of Tor traffic, incorrect geolocation, operational opacity, etc. We applied this insight to suggest a number of UX improvements that could mitigate the issues and reduce user frustration when using the Tor Browser.

AB - The strength of an anonymity system depends on the number of users. Therefore, User eXperience (UX) and usability of these systems is of critical importance for boosting adoption and use. To this end, we carried out a study with 19 non-expert participants to investigate how users experience routine Web browsing via the Tor Browser, focusing particularly on encountered problems and frustrations. Using a mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approach to study one week of naturalistic use of the Tor Browser, we uncovered a variety of UX issues, such as broken Web sites, latency, lack of common browsing conveniences, differential treatment of Tor traffic, incorrect geolocation, operational opacity, etc. We applied this insight to suggest a number of UX improvements that could mitigate the issues and reduce user frustration when using the Tor Browser.

KW - Anonymity

KW - Privacy

KW - Tor

KW - Tor Browser

KW - UX

KW - Usability

KW - User experience

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056808097&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85056808097&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3243734.3243803

DO - 10.1145/3243734.3243803

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:85056808097

T3 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security

SP - 1290

EP - 1305

BT - CCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

Y2 - 15 October 2018

ER -