Section 33.5. Conclusion

33.5. Conclusion

While the interface provided by KaZaA affords simple sharing and file download features, we find that its sharing interface is problematic. The design presupposes sophisticated user understanding of file sharing, and fails all four of the usability guidelines that we developed based on Whitten and Tygar's work.

By being provided with several different locations and interfaces to manage file sharing and not integrating them, users are not made aware of which files are being offered for others to download and are not able to determine how to successfully share and stop sharing files. Ambiguity and erroneous assumptions about recursion and which types of files can be shared allow users to make dangerous errors, such as sharing an entire hard drive. Finally, the confusing multiple purposes of the My Media interface cause confusion about what is actually being shared. Given the potential violation of user privacy and the current abuses that we noted earlier, it should be a top priority for file sharing applications to look into usability for security applications, and to design their applications accordingly.

We believe that measures to protect privacy need not reduce the amount of content that attracts users to such shared networks. Rather, they will simply avoid the unintentional sharing of a large amount of personal and confidential content that is unlikely to appeal to bona fide users anyway.