Title:	THE FOLLY GUARD – A PERSONAL AND SOCIAL COMMUNICATION PROTECTION SYSTEM
Author(s):	Thomas Keller and Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu
ISBN:	978-989-8533-32-6
Editors:	Piet Kommers and Pedro Isaías
Year:	2015
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Security, Psychology, Information
Type:	Short Paper
First Page:	233
Last Page:	238
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	The society has irrevocably changed. Just walking around a city makes this apparent. Single or in a group, people are accompanied by at least one electronic device which is able to communicate. The communication on the fly is intense and the communication industry is a multi-billion dollar marketplace ranging from tele communication infrastructure, communication products and services (e.g. social networks, mails and blogs). Information is produced at a rapid rate resulting in information overload. Because of the abundance of information, it becomes paramount that individuals find the right information at the right time. It’s the relevance and salience of the information that makes it precious. Location based services or more general context based services are a means to find the relevant and salient information easier, with a higher degree of trust. At the same time the chances to get infected by malware is omnipresent. Most information systems are complemented by security modules that try to isolate different types of malware and to identify spam. The better the protection gets the less cautious the users become. They don’t seem to realize that they expose themselves to these risks by using all the different communication means available. Even though the range of technologies used for communication has rapidly evolved, what has little changed is the psychology of the users. The evolution of human kind to use modern ICT technology took not just dozens of years but thousands. Hence, our brain may adapt on a rational and cognitive level to a certain degree but on a subconscious level we still react how we would have reacted hundreds of years ago. Psychologists’ experiments show good examples like the priming effect or framing effect where individuals react instantly without deeper thought and regret the folly later. This instinctual subconscious behavior gains more relevance in a highly digital society where information is received and sent easily and quickly. The Folly Guard system presented here aims at identifying subconscious behavior as evident in the communication medium (emails, chat logs etc.) and warning users about the adverse effects which a user might not be aware of. The Folly Guard thus operates at a psychological level to extract pitfalls in communication and expose those to the users. Thus, the system is meant to complement other IT security and protection systems, by operating in a domain that has not been previously explored. By potentially guarding against the follies of individuals, the system creates a social protection (i.e. minimizes the impact of follies at a societal level).
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