Abstract
The rapid growth of young online users requires greater attention to balancing security needs with age-appropriate user experiences. Despite the well-publicised benefits of multi-factor authentication (MFA), uptake amongst this group remains low. This study examines young people’s interaction with MFA methods to inform inclusive design for online security.
We present an evaluation involving 19 participants aged 10–14, assessing the accessibility and usability of six MFA methods within an Android mobile application. While traditional methods such as numerical MFA and push authenticators demonstrated high accuracy and faster completion times, the participants favoured the more novel MFA of copying a drawing. This highlights the need to balance speed with a positive user experience, mainly when promoting the uptake of good practices amongst young people.
The findings emphasise the potential for incorporating secure practices like MFA into platforms targeting children, contributing to building secure online habits from a young age.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
AL-Badi, F.A.: Child-friendly authentication (CFA) (2022). https://doi.org/10.54938/ijemdcsai.2022.01.1.70
Andrew, S., Watson, S., Oh, T., Tigwell, G.W.: A review of literature on accessibility and authentication techniques. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, ASSETS 2020. Association for Computing Machinery, New York (2020). https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3418005
Childers, D.: State of the auth 2021: Experiences and perceptions of multi-factor authentication. Duo Labs. Accessed 9 Jan 2023
Furnell, S., Helkala, K., Woods, N.: Disadvantaged by disability: examining the accessibility of cyber security. In: Antona, M., Stephanidis, C. (eds.) HCII 2021. LNCS, vol. 12768, pp. 197–212. Springer, Cham (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78092-0_13
Ophoff, J., Johnson, G., Renaud, K.: Cognitive function vs. accessible authentication: insights from dyslexia research. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference, W4A 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, New York (2021). https://doi.org/10.1145/3430263.3452427
Orcutt, A.M.: State of Internet Scams 2021—socialcatfish.com. https://socialcatfish.com/scamfish/state-of-internet-scams-2021/. Accessed 24 Jan 2024
RobloxWiki: Scam (2024). https://roblox.fandom.com/wiki/Scam. Accessed 24 Jan 2024
Smahel, D., et al.: Eu kids online 2020: survey results from 19 countries (2020). https://doi.org/10.21953/lse.47fdeqj01ofo
Acknowledgments
The authors express their thanks to the participants and their parents for taking part in this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Ethics declarations
Disclosure of Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Smith, L., Prior, S., Ophoff, J. (2024). Investigating the Accessibility and Usability of Multi-factor Authentication for Young People. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Ntoa, S., Salvendy, G. (eds) HCI International 2024 Posters. HCII 2024. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2119. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-61966-3_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-61966-3_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-61965-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-61966-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)