Memorable And Secure: How Do You Choose Your PIN?

Managing all your PINs is difficult. Banks acknowledge this by allowing and facilitating PIN changes. However, choosing secure PINs is a difficult task for humans as they are incapable of consciously generating randomness. This leads to certain PINs being chosen more frequently than others, which in turn increases the danger of someone else guessing correctly. We investigate different methods of supporting PIN changes and report on an evaluation of these methods in a study with 152 participants. Our contribution is twofold: We introduce an alternative to system-generated random PINs, which considers people’s preferred memorisation strategy, and, secondly, we provide indication that presenting guidance on how to avoid insecure PINs does indeed nudge people towards more secure PIN choices when they are in the process of changing their PINs

Developing and evaluating a five minute phishing awareness video

Confidence tricksters have always defrauded the unwary. The computer era has merely extended their range and made it possible for them to target anyone in the world who has an email address. Nowadays, they send phishing messages that are specially crafted to deceive. Improving user awareness has the potential to reduce their effectiveness. We have previously developed and empirically-validated phishing awareness programmes. Our programmes are specifically designed to neutralize common phish-related misconceptions and teach people how to detect phishes. Many companies and individuals are already using our programmes, but a persistent niggle has been the amount of time required to complete the awareness programme. This paper reports on how we responded by developing and evaluating a condensed phishing awareness video that delivered phishing awareness more efficiently. Having watched our video, participants in our evaluation were able to detect phishing messages significantly more reliably right after watching the video (compared to before watching the video). This ability was also demonstrated after a retention period of eight weeks after first watching the video

Exploring Consumers’ Attitudes of Smart TV Related Privacy Risks

A number of privacy risks are inherent in the Smart TV ecosystem. It is likely that many consumers are unaware of these privacy risks. Alternatively, they might be aware but consider the privacy risks acceptable. In order to explore this, we carried out an online survey with 200 participants to determine whether consumers were aware of Smart TV related privacy risks. The responses revealed a meagre level of awareness. We also explored consumers’ attitudes towards specific Smart TV related privacy risks. We isolated a number of factors that influenced rankings and used these to develop awareness-raising messages. We tested these messages in an online survey with 155 participants. The main finding was that participants were generally unwilling to disconnect their Smart TVs from the Internet because they valued the Smart TV’s Internet functionality more than their privacy. We subsequently evaluated the awareness-raising messages in a second survey with 169 participants, framing the question differently. We asked participants to choose between five different Smart TV Internet connection options, two of which retained functionality but entailed expending time and/or effort to preserve privacy

Global tropospheric halogen (Cl, Br, I) chemistry and its impact on oxidants

We present an updated mechanism for tropospheric halogen (Cl&thinsp;+&thinsp;Br&thinsp;+&thinsp;I) chemistry in the GEOS-Chem global atmospheric chemical transport model and apply it to investigate halogen radical cycling and implications for tropospheric oxidants. Improved representation of HOBr heterogeneous chemistry and its pH dependence in our simulation leads to less efficient recycling and mobilization of bromine radicals and enables the model to include mechanistic sea salt aerosol debromination without generating excessive BrO. The resulting global mean tropospheric BrO mixing ratio is 0.19&thinsp;ppt (parts per trillion), lower than previous versions of GEOS-Chem. Model BrO shows variable consistency and biases in comparison to surface and aircraft observations in marine air, which are often near or below the detection limit. The model underestimates the daytime measurements of Cl2 and BrCl from the ATom aircraft campaign over the Pacific and Atlantic, which if correct would imply a very large missing primary source of chlorine radicals. Model IO is highest in the marine boundary layer and uniform in the free troposphere, with a global mean tropospheric mixing ratio of 0.08&thinsp;ppt, and shows consistency with surface and aircraft observations. The modeled global mean tropospheric concentration of Cl atoms is 630&thinsp;cm&minus;3, contributing 0.8&thinsp;% of the global oxidation of methane, 14&thinsp;% of ethane, 8&thinsp;% of propane, and 7&thinsp;% of higher alkanes. Halogen chemistry decreases the global tropospheric burden of ozone by 11&thinsp;%, NOx by 6&thinsp;%, and OH by 4&thinsp;%. Most of the ozone decrease is driven by iodine-catalyzed loss. The resulting GEOS-Chem ozone simulation is unbiased in the Southern Hemisphere but too low in the Northern Hemisphere. &nbsp; Full List of Authors: Xuan Wang1,2, Daniel J. Jacob3, William Downs3, Shuting Zhai4, Lei Zhu5, Viral Shah3, Christopher D. Holmes6, Tom&aacute;s Sherwen7,8, Becky Alexander4, Mathew J. Evans7,8, Sebastian D. Eastham9, J. Andrew Neuman10,11, Patrick R. Veres10, Theodore K. Koenig11,12, Rainer Volkamer11,12, L. Gregory Huey13, Thomas J. Bannan14, Carl J. Percival14,a, Ben H. Lee4, and Joel A. Thornton4 1School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China 2City University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China 3School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 4Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA 5School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China 6Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA 7Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, University of York, York, UK 8National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of York, York, UK 9Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 10NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory (CSL), Boulder, Colorado, USA 11Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA 12Department of Chemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA 13School of Earth and Atmospheric Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA 14School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK anow at: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA &nbsp;</p

Inter-comparison of MAX-DOAS measurements of tropospheric HONO slant column densities and vertical profiles during the CINDI-2 campaign

We present the inter-comparison of delta slant column densities (SCDs) and vertical profiles of nitrous acid (HONO) derived from measurements of different multi-axis differential optical absorption spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS) instruments and using different inversion algorithms during the Second Cabauw Inter-comparison campaign for Nitrogen Dioxide measuring Instruments (CINDI-2) in September&nbsp;2016 at Cabauw, the Netherlands (51.97∘&thinsp;N, 4.93∘&thinsp;E). The HONO vertical profiles, vertical column densities (VCDs), and near-surface volume mixing ratios are compared between different MAX-DOAS instruments and profile inversion algorithms for the first time. Systematic and random discrepancies of the HONO results are derived from the comparisons of all data sets against their median values. Systematic discrepancies of HONO delta SCDs are observed in the range of &plusmn;0.3&times;1015&thinsp;molec.&thinsp;cm&minus;2, which is half of the typical random discrepancy of 0.6&times;1015&thinsp;molec.&thinsp;cm&minus;2. For a typical high HONO delta SCD of 2&times;1015&thinsp;molec.&thinsp;cm&minus;2, the relative systematic and random discrepancies are about 15&thinsp;% and 30&thinsp;%, respectively. The inter-comparison of HONO profiles shows that both systematic and random discrepancies of HONO VCDs and near-surface volume mixing ratios (VMRs) are mostly in the range of &sim;&plusmn;0.5&times;1014&thinsp;molec.&thinsp;cm&minus;2 and &sim;&plusmn;0.1&thinsp;ppb (typically &sim;20&thinsp;%). Further we find that the discrepancies of the retrieved HONO profiles are dominated by discrepancies of the HONO delta SCDs. The profile retrievals only contribute to the discrepancies of the HONO profiles by &sim;5&thinsp;%. However, some data sets with substantially larger discrepancies than the typical values indicate that inappropriate implementations of profile inversion algorithms and configurations of radiative transfer models in the profile retrievals can also be an important uncertainty source. In addition, estimations of measurement uncertainties of HONO dSCDs, which can significantly impact profile retrievals using the optimal estimation method, need to consider not only DOAS fit errors, but also atmospheric variability, especially for an instrument with a DOAS fit error lower than &sim;3&times;1014&thinsp;molec.&thinsp;cm&minus;2. The MAX-DOAS results during the CINDI-2 campaign indicate that the peak HONO levels (e.g. near-surface VMRs of &sim;0.4&thinsp;ppb) often appeared in the early morning and below 0.2&thinsp;km. The near-surface VMRs retrieved from the MAX-DOAS observations are compared with those measured using a co-located long-path DOAS instrument. The systematic differences are smaller than 0.15 and 0.07&thinsp;ppb during early morning and around noon, respectively. Since true HONO values at high altitudes are not known in the absence of real measurements, in order to evaluate the abilities of profile inversion algorithms to respond to different HONO profile shapes, we performed sensitivity studies using synthetic HONO delta SCDs simulated by a radiative transfer model with assumed HONO profiles. The tests indicate that the profile inversion algorithms based on the optimal estimation method with proper configurations can reproduce the different HONO profile shapes well. Therefore we conclude that the features of HONO accumulated near the surface derived from MAX-DOAS measurements are expected to represent the ambient HONO profiles well. Full List of Authors: Yang Wang1, Arnoud Apituley2, Alkiviadis Bais3, Steffen Beirle1, Nuria Benavent4, Alexander Borovski5, Ilya Bruchkouski6, Ka Lok Chan7,8, Sebastian Donner1, Theano Drosoglou3, Henning Finkenzeller9,10, Martina M. Friedrich11, Udo Frie&szlig;12, David Garcia-Nieto4, Laura G&oacute;mez-Mart&iacute;n13, Fran&ccedil;ois Hendrick11, Andreas Hilboll14, Junli Jin15, Paul Johnston16, Theodore K. Koenig9,10, Karin Kreher17, Vinod Kumar1, Aleksandra Kyuberis18, Johannes Lampel12,19, Cheng Liu20, Haoran Liu20, Jianzhong Ma21, Oleg L. Polyansky18,22, Oleg Postylyakov5, Richard Querel16, Alfonso Saiz-Lopez4, Stefan Schmitt12, Xin Tian23,24, Jan-Lukas Tirpitz12, Michel Van Roozendael11, Rainer Volkamer9,10, Zhuoru Wang8, Pinhua Xie24, Chengzhi Xing25, Jin Xu24, Margarita Yela13, Chengxin Zhang25, and Thomas Wagner11Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany 2Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, the Netherlands 3Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece 4Department of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate, Institute of Physical Chemistry Rocasolano (CSIC), Madrid, Spain 5A. M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia 6National Ozone Monitoring Research and Education Center BSU (NOMREC BSU), Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus 7Meteorologisches Institut, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit&auml;t M&uuml;nchen, Munich, Germany 8Remote Sensing Technology Institute, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany 9Department of Chemistry, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA 10Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, CO, USA 11Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, Brussels, Belgium 12Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany 13National Institute of Aerospatial Technology, Madrid, Spain 14Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany 15Meteorological Observation Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China 16National Institute of Water &amp; Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Lauder, New Zealand 17BK Scientific, Mainz, Germany 18Institute of Applied Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia 19Airyx GmbH, Justus-von-Liebig-Str. 14, 69214 Eppelheim, Germany 20Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China 21Chinese Academy of Meteorology Science, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China 22Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower St, London, WC1E 6BT, UK 23Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, China 24Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, China 25School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China </ul

The influence of natural and anthropogenic secondary sources on the glyoxal global distribution

Glyoxal, the smallest dicarbonyl, which has recently been observed from space, is expected to provide indications on volatile organic compounds (VOC) oxidation and secondary aerosol formation in the troposphere. Glyoxal (CHOCHO) is known to be mostly of natural origin and is produced during biogenic VOC oxidation. However, a number of anthropogenically emitted hydrocarbons, like acetylene and aromatics, have been positively identified as CHOCHO precursors. The present study investigates the contribution of pollution to the CHOCHO levels by taking into account the secondary chemical formation of CHOCHO from precursors emitted from biogenic, anthropogenic and biomass burning sources. The impact of potential primary land emissions of CHOCHO is also investigated. A global 3-dimensional chemistry transport model of the troposphere (TM4-ECPL) able to simulate the gas phase chemistry coupled with all major aerosol components is used. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; The secondary anthropogenic contribution from fossil fuel and industrial VOCs emissions oxidation to the CHOCHO columns is found to reach 20–70% in the industrialized areas of the Northern Hemisphere and 3–20% in the tropics. This secondary CHOCHO source is on average three times larger than that from oxidation of VOCs from biomass burning sources. The chemical production of CHOCHO is calculated to equal to about 56 Tg y&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;1&lt;/sup&gt; with 70% being produced from biogenic hydrocarbons oxidation, 17% from acetylene, 11% from aromatic chemistry and 2% from ethene and propene. CHOCHO is destroyed in the troposphere primarily by reaction with OH radicals (23%) and by photolysis (63%), but it is also removed from the atmosphere through wet (8%) and dry deposition (6%). Potential formation of secondary organic aerosol through CHOCHO losses on/in aerosols and clouds is neglected here due to the significant uncertainties associated with the underlying chemistry. The global annual mean CHOCHO burden and lifetime in the model domain are estimated to be 0.02 Tg (equal to the global burden seen by SCIAMACHY over land for the year 2005) and about 3 h, respectively. The model results are compared with satellite observations of CHOCHO columns. When accounting only for the secondary sources of CHOCHO in the model, the model underestimates CHOCHO columns observed by satellites. This is attributed to an overestimate of CHOCHO sinks or a missing global source of about 20 Tg y&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Using the current primary emissions of CHOCHO from biomass burning together with the anthropogenic combustion sources of about 7 Tg y&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;1&lt;/sup&gt; leads to an overestimate by the model over hot spot areas

Importance of reactive halogens in the tropical marine atmosphere: A regional modelling study using WRF-Chem

This study investigates the impact of halogens on atmospheric chemistry in the tropical troposphere and explores the sensitivity of this to uncertainties in the fluxes of halogens to the atmosphere and the chemical processing. To do this the regional chemistry transport model WRF-Chem has been extended, for the first time, to include halogen chemistry (bromine, chlorine and iodine chemistry), including heterogeneous recycling reactions involving sea-salt aerosol and other particles, reactions of Br with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), along with oceanic emissions of halocarbons, VOCs and inorganic iodine. The study focuses on the tropical East Pacific using field observations from the TORERO campaign (January-February 2012) to evaluate the model performance. Including all the new processes, the model does a reasonable job reproducing the observed mixing ratios of BrO and IO, albeit with some discrepancies, some of which can be attributed to difficulties in the model’s ability to reproduce the observed halocarbons. This is somewhat expected given the large uncertainties in the air-sea fluxes of the halocarbons in a region where there are few observations of seawater concentrations. We see a considerable impact on the Bry partitioning when heterogeneous chemistry is included, with a greater proportion of the Bry in active forms such as BrO, HOBr and dihalogens. Including debromination of sea-salt increases BrO slightly throughout the free troposphere, but in the tropical marine boundary layer, where the sea-salt particles are plentiful and relatively acidic, debromination leads to overestimation of the observed BrO. However, it should be noted that the modelled BrO was extremely sensitive to the inclusion of reactions between Br and the VOCs, which convert Br to HBr, a far less reactive form of Bry. Excluding these reactions leads to modelled BrO mixing ratios greater than observed. The reactions between Br and aldehydes were found to be particularly important, despite the model underestimating the amount of aldehydes observed in the atmosphere. There are only small changes to Iy partitioning and IO when the heterogeneous reactions, primarly on sea-salt, are included. Our model results show that the tropospheric Ox loss due to halogens is 31%. This loss is mostly due to I (16%) and Br (14%) and it is in good agreement with other estimates from state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistry models

Replication Study: A Cross-Country Field Observation Study of Real World PIN Usage at ATMs and in Various Electronic Payment Scenarios

In this paper, we describe the study we carried out to replicate and extend the field observation study of real world ATM use carried out by De Luca et al., published at the SOUPS conference in 2010. Replicating De Luca et al.’s study, we observed PIN shield- ing rates at ATMs in Germany. We then extended their research by conducting a similar field observation study in Sweden and the United Kingdom. Moreover, in addition to observing ATM users (withdrawing), we also observed electronic payment scenarios re- quiring PIN entry. Altogether, we gathered data related to 930 observations. Similar to De Luca et al., we conducted follow-up interviews, the better to interpret our findings. We were able to confirm De Luca et al.’s findings with respect to low PIN shield- ing incidence during ATM cash withdrawals, with no significant differences between shielding rates across the three countries. PIN shielding incidence during electronic payment scenarios was sig- nificantly lower than incidence during ATM withdrawal scenarios in both the United Kingdom and Sweden. Shielding levels in Ger- many were similar during both withdrawal and payment scenarios. We conclude the paper by suggesting a number of explanations for the differences in shielding that our study revealed

Global impacts of tropospheric halogens (Cl, Br, I) on oxidants and composition in GEOS-Chem [Discussion paper]

We present a simulation of the global present-day composition of the troposphere which includes the chemistry of halogens (Cl, Br, I). Building on previous work within the GEOS-Chem model we include emissions of inorganic iodine from the oceans, anthropogenic and biogenic sources of halogenated gases, gas phase chemistry, and a parameterised approach to heterogeneous halogen chemistry. Consistent with Schmidt et al. (2016) we do not include sea-salt debromination. Observations of halogen radicals (BrO, IO) are sparse but the model has some skill in reproducing these. Modelled IO shows both high and low biases when compared to different datasets, but BrO concentrations appear to be modelled low. Comparisons to the very sparse observations dataset of reactive Cl species suggest the model represents a lower limit of the impacts of these species, likely due to underestimates in emissions and therefore burdens. Inclusion of Cl, Br, and I results in a general improvement in simulation of ozone (O3) concentrations, except in polar regions where the model now underestimates O3 concentrations. Halogen chemistry reduces the global tropospheric O3 burden by 18.6 %, with the O3 lifetime reducing from 26 to 22 days. Global mean OH concentrations of 1.28  ×  106 molecules cm−3 are 8.2 % lower than in a simulation without halogens, leading to an increase in the CH4 lifetime (10.8 %) due to OH oxidation from 7.47 to 8.28 years. Oxidation of CH4 by Cl is small (∼  2 %) but Cl oxidation of other VOCs (ethane, acetone, and propane) can be significant (∼  15–27 %). Oxidation of VOCs by Br is smaller, representing 3.9 % of the loss of acetaldehyde and 0.9 % of the loss of formaldehyde

Comparison of aromatic hydrocarbon measurements made by PTR-MS, DOAS and GC-FID during the MCMA 2003 Field Experiment

A comparison of aromatic hydrocarbon measurements is reported for the CENICA supersite in the district of Iztapalapa during the Mexico City Metropolitan Area field experiment in April 2003 (MCMA 2003). Data from three different measurement methods were compared: a Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometer (PTR-MS), long path measurements using a UV Differential Optical Absorption Spectrometer (DOAS), and Gas Chromatography-Flame Ionization analysis (GC-FID) of canister samples. The principle focus was on the comparison between PTR-MS and DOAS data. Lab tests established that the PTR-MS and DOAS calibrations were consistent for a suite of aromatic compounds including benzene, toluene, p-xylene, ethylbenzene, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, phenol and styrene. The point sampling measurements by the PTR-MS and GC-FID showed good correlations (r=0.6), and were in reasonable agreement for toluene, C2-alkylbenzenes and C3-alkylbenzenes. The PTR-MS benzene data were consistently high, indicating interference from ethylbenzene fragmentation for the 145 Td drift field intensity used in the experiment. Correlations between the open-path data measured at 16-m height over a 860-m path length (retroreflector in 430 m distance), and the point measurements collected at 37-m sampling height were best for benzene (r=0.61), and reasonably good for toluene, C2-alkylbenzenes, naphthalene, styrene, cresols and phenol (r>0.5). There was good agreement between DOAS and PTR-MS measurements of benzene after correction for the PTR-MS ethylbenzene interference. Mixing ratios measured by DOAS were on average a factor of 1.7 times greater than the PTR-MS data for toluene, C2-alkylbenzenes, naphthalene and styrene. The level of agreement for the toluene data displayed a modest dependence on wind direction, establishing that spatial gradients – horizontal, vertical, or both – in toluene mixing ratios were significant, and up to a factor of 2 despite the fact that all measurements were conducted above roof level. Our analysis highlights a potential problem in defining a VOC sampling strategy that is meaningful for the comparison with photochemical transport models: meaningful measurements require a spatial fetch that is comparable to the grid cell size of models, which is typically a few 10 km2. Long-path DOAS measurements inherently average over a larger spatial scale than point measurements. The spatial representativeness can be further increased if observations are conducted outside the surface roughness sublayer, which might require measurements at altitudes as high as 10 s of metres above roof level.Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (Feodor Lynen fellowship)Henry & Camille Dreyfus Foundation (Postdoctral Fellowship in Environmental Chemistry