Security, Privacy and Transparency

I really enjoyed being part of the emerging-work track, HotPETS, at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium earlier this month. From meeting lots of great people to getting face-time with the Simply Secure team, Philadelphia was fun. Scout and I …

My recent post describing some of the reasons we choose Slack over IRC for our public forum is part of a larger conversation people are having around the promise and concerns of group-communication tools. A quick search for “Slack vs. IRC” yields a …

Recent attacks byDaesh in Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, and Paris have fanned the flames of an ongoing debate about software that is resistant to surveillance. It seems that some participants in that debate are trying to use these attacks as an excuse to …

In September 2023, we were able to participate in Feira, the Global Gathering, a festival for digital rights defenders, convened by Team Community. The Feira was a three day social and networking festival hosted in Estoril, Portugal on September 15 - 17, 2023. The event, designed, modeled and named for the concept of a community market, was created to provide digital rights defenders with a space to connect with others in the digital rights community for informal meetups, discussions, and joy — particularly as this was the first time gathering in-person for most participants since before the start of the COVID19 pandemic.

Get prepared to discuss security with more technical team mates. If you’re a designer, learn useful background information.

Mailvelope is a browser extension that makes it easy to use PGP encryption, whether you use Gmail, Outlook, or many other email providers. With the support of UXFund, Simply Secure worked with Mailvelope to support users who want to use an organization-wide PGP key to send an encrypted email. Kelsey Smith and Thomas Oberndörfer had a conversation in 2022, reflecting on the technical problem and the design process.

To help you assess risks to your data, we provide ways to dissect threats and tips to protect against them.

Introducing our new report “From Policy to Pixels: Strategic UX Design and User Support for GDPR Implementation.” Supported by the University of California Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC), we conducted research to better understand how GDPR policy implementation is situated in current UX practices and how multi-disciplinary product teams reach design decisions

Through UX changes, we helped guide Mailvelope users through the headaches of key management.

My last post examined the concept of phishing, which is a type of social-engineering attack to con people into divulging private information like passwords or credit card numbers. When you look for advice on how to protect against phishing, most of …

This is the first in a short series of posts looking at Facebook’s “Privacy Checkup” feature. This installment examines why even privacy advocates who avoid social-media sites should take time to understand it and related user experiences. The next …

It can be hard to communicate about security-related features with users who aren't already security experts. From word choice to the level of detail included, it's easy to overwhelm people with information, leave them scared, or bore them to …

Building great software requires understanding what users want and need. If you’re building privacy-preserving software, this includes understanding the privacy threats that your users face. One of the participants in Ame’s NYC study. When Ame set …

Most people who spend time online have a general idea of what “phishing” is, but it can be hard for folks outside of the security community to pin down an exact definition. Understanding the threat that phishing attacks pose can help designers and …

Many regular readers of our blog have already drunk the metaphorical Kool-Aid. You know that a good user experience is critical to an app’s success; moreover, you know that when a piece of software seeks to preserve its users’ privacy, a poor UX can …

One of the highlights of HybridConf 2016 was hearing writer Stevyn Colgan talk about his time as a police officer at London’s Scotland Yard. He entertained the audience of UX designers and front-end developers with stories from his book, Why Did the …

Web browsers are utility software; they are designed to work for all people. Not only must their features meet the needs of average members of a population, they must also work for people with special needs. As Firefox says on its mobile …