MRI revealed that the human brain partially stops when too many security warnings are seen.

A security warning pops up when opening a page with a problem such as how to set up an SSL server certificate or unauthorized software. It is a warning window that users who are familiar with the Internet have watched over and over, but by watching this security warning many times, it is possible that the fact that human's attention is extremely deteriorated is a collaboration between Google and multiple universities It is clarified in the research paper.

Microsoft Word - Anderson et al. CHI 2015 v 7.8.docx - Anderson_et_al. _ CHI - 2015.pdf
(PDF file)http://neurosecurity.byu.edu/media/Anderson_et_al._CHI_2015.pdf

Improving SSL Warnings: Comprehension and Adherence - sslinterstitial-chi.pdf
(PDF file)https://adrifelt.github.io/sslinterstitial-chi.pdf

MRIs show our brains shutting down when we see security prompts | Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/mris-show-our-brains-shutting-down-when-we-see-security-prompts/

Security alerts are provided to prevent users from accessing security-sensitive pages. Pittsburgh University · Brigham Young University · Google verified that such security warning actually "How much deterrence do you have?" Using MRI.

Conference conferences conferencesCHI 2015According to research papers scheduled to be announced at the University of Tokyo, the research team sent 25 students MRI (Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging), We asked for 560 software windows and security warnings and analyzed the reactions of the parts related to the brain's attention. As a result, the attention dropped sharply just as the same warning again appeared, and there was a drastic drop of attention when the number of repetitions of warning reached 13 times.

This indicates that the brain was partially "completely paused" against the stimulus of "warning", and by repeatedly showing a certain stimulus by repeatedly showing the same security warning by repeatedly showing the same security warning The phenomenon that the reaction to the stimulus gradually disappears "Acclimatization (Junka)It is thought that it is happening.


Since it turned out that the effect was weak with the existing security warning, the research team proposed a security warning which newly changes the color, wording, shape, etc. of the warning "Polymorphic Warnings" every time . The research team asked the participants to actually set up and install the software using a laptop computer, and the reaction of "polymorphism warning" displayed halfway through the movement speed of the mouse cursormillisecondWe measured and verified it in units. As a result of this test, "polymorphism warning" has been found to make it difficult for users to adapt.

In addition, when you are involved in these studies, Google uses Chrome's security warnings to make it more effective, which helps improve security UI.