A Large-Scale Evaluation of High-Impact Password Strength Meters

Passwords are ubiquitous in our daily digital life. They protect various types of assets ranging from a simple account on an online newspaper website to our health information on government websites. However, due to the inherent value they protect, malicious people have developed insights into cracking them. Users are pushed to choose stronger passwords to comply with password policies, which they may not like much. Another solution is to put in place proactive password-strength meters/checkers to give feedbacks to users while they create new passwords. Millions of users are now exposed to these meters at highly popular web services that use user-chosen passwords for authentication, or more recently in password managers. Recent studies have found evidence that some meters actually guide users to choose better passwords -which is a rare bit of good news in password research. However, these meters are mostly based on ad-hoc design. At least, as we found, most vendors do not provide any explanation of their design choices, sometimes making them appear as a black-box. We analyze password meters deployed in selected popular websites and password managers. We document obfuscated open-source meters; infer the algorithm behind the closed-source ones; and measure the strength labels assigned to common passwords from several password dictionaries. From this empirical analysis with millions of passwords, we shed light on how the server-end of some web service meters functions, provide examples of highly inconsistent strength outcomes for the same password in different meters, along with examples of many weak passwords being labeled as strong or even excellent. These weaknesses and inconsistencies may confuse users in choosing a stronger password, and thus may weaken the purpose of these meters. On the other hand, we believe these findings may help improve existing meters, and possibly make them an effective tool in the long run

Got a Minute? Instruction Tune-Up for Time Pressed Librarians

This book contains 19 essays that have been written by current LIS Students who were enrolled in the LIS4330: Library Instruction class at the University of Denver, 2016. Designed to provide a short and pithy overview of a topic that is related to instruction, education, or information literacy, each essays aims to be accessible and approachable for time-pressed librarians who may not have time to catch up

Bowdoin Orient v.131, no.1-24 (1999-2000)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-2000s/1000/thumbnail.jp

Conscionable consumption: a feminist grounded theory of porn consumer ethics

Much scholarship on pornography consumption has revolved around porn harms or porn empowerment discourses. Moving away from pro- and anti-porn agendas, the research presented in this thesis was designed as an exploratory, qualitative investigation of consumer experiences of pornography, using grounded theory in an effort to transcend the polarised porn debates. By means of a two-stage data collection process involving an online group activity and in-depth interviews, this research set out to extend our understanding of how feminists experience, understand and articulate their engagements with porn. Grounded theory’s focus on iterative data collection, structured analysis and inductive theory development lent itself to several key aims for this project: (a) eschewing, as far as possible, commonly-held assumptions about the research topic and research subjects; (b) resisting agenda-driven frameworks that seek to validate pro- or anti-porn stances; and (c) allowing for the voices of porn consumers themselves to be heard and taken seriously, in a way that hasn’t tended to be prioritised in pornography effects research or the public arena more widely (Mowlabocus and Wood 2015: 119). The iterative approach to data collection advocated by grounded theory also enabled participants to take a more agentive role in determining the direction of the research. As a result, certain elements of the project took unforeseen trajectories, shedding light on additional substantive areas for inquiry beyond those initially intended. Namely, the study provided key insights into the interaction between ethics and practice in porn consumption amongst London feminists. This gave rise to the development of the 'conscionable consumption' model; a theoretical framework for conceptualising the experiences and processes described. Results indicated that feminists’ experiences of porn consumption were heavily influenced by their beliefs about what constituted ‘ethical enough’ (conscionable). These were accompanied by contemplative moments, whose nature tended to correlate with the degree to which the individual felt they had strayed from their own conceptions of conscionable practice, and the degree to which these decisions could be justified or dismissed afterwards. Respondents described an interactive relationship between such reflections and future intentions and/or attitudes, illustrating a cycle of evolving and adapting behaviour complemented by fluctuating definitions of conscionability. In this way, rather than referring to an achieved or failed ‘ethical consumer’ status, the porn ethics project was conceptualised as an ongoing process of ‘conscionable’ negotiation. Such findings enhance our understanding of the ways in which ethics and porn use are woven together and navigated by feminist consumers of pornography, whilst simultaneously extending our knowledge of a demographic hitherto unexplored within both the fields of porn studies and consumer ethics research alike. Keywords: feminism, pornography, consumer ethics, conscionable consumptio

Knudsen v. J.R. Simplot Company Clerk\u27s Record Dckt. 47020

https://digitalcommons.law.uidaho.edu/idaho_supreme_court_record_briefs/9059/thumbnail.jp

Why the caged bird sings: cultural factors underlying the use of online social networks among Saudi Arabian and UK users

The 21st century has seen a dramatic rise in Internet access and connectivity across the world. To date, only a small amount of research has been published on the subject of culture and Internet usage. This thesis investigates whether, and how, individuals from two different cultures (Saudi Arabia and the UK) engage with online social networks (OSNs) differently, and what might be the underlying psychological factors explaining such differences. A first qualitative study used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA; Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009) to investigate motivations for using OSNs among Saudi and British participants. Both groups reported that they used OSNs to present a positive self-image, while desiring to maintain a sense of their ‘genuine’ self in online interactions. For Saudi participants, OSNs also provided opportunities for selfexpression that were otherwise unavailable. British participants reported using OSNs for relationship maintenance. A second qualitative study also looked at motivations, but narrowed the focus to identity motives, applying motivated identity construction theory (Vignoles, 2011) to a thematic analysis of tweets written by citizens of Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom. Motives for meaning, belonging, distinctiveness, continuity, efficacy, and self-esteem were all detectable in the tweets of both Saudi and British users. The manner in which these motives were pursued varied according to the cultural context of users within the affordances of the online context in which they were communicating. The research project then aimed to establish a way of measuring differences in online self-presentation strategies, by developing the online self-presentation strategies scale (OSPSS). Items were selected using exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM). The scale was incorporated in a large-scale (N = 694) quantitative study of Saudi and British OSN users that measured self-presentation strategies, motivations of OSNs use and target audience. Mediation analyses were conducted to find out whether cultural differences in these dimensions were explained by two forms of cultural variation: relational mobility and Schwartz’ theory of basic values. Self-enhancement vs. self-transcendence values and relational mobility, more than openness to change vs. conservation values, accounted for mean differences between the groups in motives, targeted audiences and self-presentation strategies. Together the studies reveal observable differences in the ways in which people from Saudi Arabia and the UK engage with OSNs. These are partially explained by the affordances that social media provide, which compensate for the unavailability of certain modes of expression and communication within offline cultural contexts, and by cultural differences in value priorities

Digital Inclusion International Policy and Research

This collection presents policy and research that addresses digital inequalities, access, and skills, from multiple international perspectives