Understanding User\u27s Behavior and Protection Strategy upon Losing, or Identifying Unauthorized Access to Online Account

A wide-range of personal and sensitive information are stored in users’ online accounts. Losing access, or an unauthorized access to one of those accounts could put them into the risks of privacy breach, cause financial loss, and compromise their accessibility to important information and documents. A large body of prior work focused on developing new schemes and strategies to protect users’ online security. However, there is a dearth in existing literature to understand users’ strategies and contingency plans to protect their online accounts once they lose access, or identify an unauthorized access to one of their accounts. We addressed this gap in our work, where we conducted semi-structured interview with 59 participants from three different countries: Bangladesh, Turkey, and USA. Our findings reveal the unawareness, misconceptions, and privacy and accessibility concerns of users, which refrain them from taking security-preserving steps to protect their online accounts. We also identified users’ prevention strategies that could put their online security into further risks