EAGER: Physical, Social and Situational Factors as Determents of Public WiFi Users Online Behaviors

公共WiFi网络的激增允许用户从各种公共场所访问互联网。不幸的是，许多公共WiFi网络是未加密和不安全的，对用户的安全和隐私构成风险，并允许用户潜在地发起非法在线行为。在社会科学家和计算机科学家之间的跨学科合作中，PI建立在社会学，心理学和犯罪学模型的基础上，利用社区，空间和时间的结构，并将其扩展到研究用户对公共WiFi网络的感知和行为。这项研究收集了马里兰州公共WiFi网络的数据，并探讨公共WiFi用户的上网行为是否（合法和非法）和网络犯罪受害的脆弱性受以下因素影响：（1）一天中的时间;（2）WiFi连接的速度和安全级别;（3）WiFi网络所在社区的社会经济特征;（4）运营公共WiFi的企业类型;（5）该位置中存在的个人的物理布置和数量;以及（6）物理环境中网络安全意识线索的存在。该项目有助于制定鼓励安全使用公共WiFi网络的战略、政策和最佳做法。

The proliferation of public WiFi networks allows users to access the Internet from various public locations. Unfortunately, many public WiFi networks are unencrypted and insecure, posing risks to users' security and privacy, and allowing users to potentially initiate illegal online behaviors. In this interdisciplinary collaboration between social scientists and computer scientists, the PIs build upon sociological, psychological, and criminological models that leverage constructs of community, space, and time, and extend them to study users' perceptions of and behavior on public WiFi networks.This study gathers data from public WiFi networks across the state of Maryland, and explores whether public WiFi users' online behaviors (both legitimate and illegitimate) and vulnerabilities to cybercrime victimization are shaped by (1) time of day; (2) the speed and level of security of the WiFi connection; (3) the socio-economic characteristics of the neighborhood within which the WiFi network is located; (4) the type of business operating the public WiFi; (5) the physical arrangement and number of individuals present in the location; and (6) the presence of cyber-security awareness cues in the physical environment. This project enables the development of strategies, policies, and best practices for encouraging safe use of public WiFi networks.