User-Friendly Security Patterns for Designing Social Network Websites

The number of users in Social Networking Sites (SNSs) is increasing exponentially. As a result, several security and privacy problems in SNSs have appeared. Part of these problems is caused by insecure Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). Therefore, the developers of SNSs should take into account the balance between security and usability aspects during the development process. This paper proposes a set of user-friendly security patterns to help SNS developers to design interactive environments which protect the privacy and security of individuals while being highly user friendly. The authors proposed four patterns and evaluated them against the Facebook interfaces. The authors found that participants accepted the interfaces constructed through the proposed patterns more willingly than the Facebook interfaces.