Don't Use Fingerprint, it's Raining!

Abstract

This paper investigates how smartphone users perceive switching from their primary authentication mechanism to a fallback one, based on the context. This is useful in cases where the primary mechanism fails (e.g., wet fingers when using fingerprint). While prior work introduced the concept, we are the first to investigate its perception by users and their willingness to follow a system's suggestion for a switch. We present findings from a two-week field study (N=29) using an Android app, showing that users are willing to adopt alternative mechanisms when prompted. We discuss how context-awareness can improve the perception of authentication reliability and potentially improve usability and security. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Field studies; Smartphones; • Security and privacy → Biometrics.

Prototyping Usable Privacy and Security Systems: Insights from Experts

“…There are also prototype systems that were not built to transition into practice, but rather to shed light on users' perception of different authentication concepts on doors (Mecke et al, 2018) or on mobile devices (Prange et al, 2020). USEC researchers have also built prototype systems to investigate the extent to which security systems from mobile devices can be adapted for virtual reality applications (George et al, 2017) or to study the impact of different input techniques and threat models on users' security (Mathis, Williamson, et al, 2021).…”