HAIC will organize three HAIC talks this spring: the first one in April 27, the second one a day before the Secure Systems Demo day in May 23, and the third one in the Secure Systems Demo Day in May 24 (we will announce the speaker later). Below you can find the details of the coming events:
ONLINE: April 27, 16:00-17:30: Marshini Chetty “Only 3 Left at This Price: Investigating Dark Patterns and Consumer Protections”
Lecture description: Shopping online? Find yourself asking: are there really only 3 items left at this price? In some cases, the answer is that it is a downright lie or at best misleading in nature. Yet, it is not always easy to recognize this kind of content or the effect it has on consumers. In the shopping example, consumers may not realize they are being duped into making purchasing decisions they may not have, if fully informed and presented with accurate information. To keep up with this increasing trend towards intentionally misleading user interface choices, or dark patterns, which steer consumers down certain paths for the gain of the service provider, policy-makers are creating, discussing, and reviewing current regulations for online content. In this talk, I present case studies of dark patterns and the current consumer protections in place to prevent users from being harmed in the US: dark patterns used in shopping websites and in social media account deletion interfaces. I will provide evidence about the prevalence of these issues on the web, how users perceive them, and discuss what kinds of solutions can be put into place to help consumers become aware of and be protected from unfair and unjust practices that rely on misleading premises. To conclude, I will provide suggestions for future work for researchers, policy-makers, and designers who are invested in enhancing online consumer protections.
More information: https://haic.fi/talks/#marshini-chetty
Registration: https://haic-talk-with-marshini-chetty.eventbrite.fi
ONLINE: May 23, 16:00-17:30: Franziska Roesner “Attacking the Brain: Security and Privacy Case Studies in Online Advertising, Misinformation, and Augmented Reality “
Lecture description: People who use modern technologies are inundated with content and information from many sources, including advertisements on the web, posts on social media, and (looking to the future) content in augmented or virtual reality. While these technologies are transforming our lives and communications in many positive ways, they also come with serious risks to users’ security, privacy, and the trustworthiness of content they see: the online advertising ecosystem tracks individual users and may serve misleading or deceptive ads, social media feeds are full of potential mis/disinformation, and emerging augmented reality technologies can directly modify users’ perceptions of the physical world in undesirable ways. In this talk, I will discuss several lines of research from our lab that explore these issues from a broad computer security and privacy perspective, leveraging methodologies ranging from qualitative user studies to systematic measurement studies to system design and evaluation. What unites these efforts is a key question: how are our brains “under attack” in today’s and tomorrow’s information environments, and how can we design platforms and ecosystems more robust to these risks?
More information: https://haic.fi/talks/#franziska-roesner
Registration: https://haic-talk-with-franziska-roesner.eventbrite.fi
CS building, Otaniemi: May 24, 12:00-17:00: Secure Systems Demo Day 2022
The Secure Systems Demo Day will take place this year on Tuesday, May 24, in the Computer Science building at Aalto University. This is an annual event where we showcase all the results of the preceding year. Usually some 120-150 people attend, many from local infosec industry. If you want to have a one-stop overview of information security research going on in Finland’s capital area, then do plan to stop by.
You can take a look at the programs from previous years to get an idea of the scope of the event: https://ssg.aalto.fi/research/ssg-demo-days/
Providing industry contacts to students is one of HAIC’s main goals and HAIC encourages companies to advertise available thesis and internship positions in the event. We hope that students, as well as companies and academia researchers, will find this event useful for creating new contacts and searching for interesting research topics to work with.
Annual Demo Day events are jointly organized by the Secure Systems Groups at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki and Helsinki-Aalto Institute for Cybersecurity (HAIC). The events are open to all and free of charge.
More information: https://ssg.aalto.fi/events/secure-systems-demo-day-2022/
Registration: https://link.webropol.com/ep/ssg-demo-day-2022