Trusting WiFi hotspots

The CHI2008 paper I chose had to do with the public's trust in WiFi networks in public places. The paper was written by Tim Kindberg, Eamonn O'Neill, Chris Bevan, Vassilis Kostakos, Danae Fraser, and Tim Jay. As internet-connected mobile devices are becoming more widespread, people are finding themselves looking for internet connectivity. The goal of the researchers was to discover what kind of trust users put into unknown hotspots and how easily the users could be fooled into believing that a hotspot was safe. There were two main hypotheses: first, hotspots with a "welcome page" that displayed an image local to the establishment would garner trust from users. The other hypothesis was the exact oposite: hotspots with an image not local to the particular establishment would be less trusted by its users. A control was set up where an image was displayed that had no bias to a specific location. The methods that the researchers took to explore their hypotheses included spoofing wifi hotspots and allowing users to connect to them. The user was said to trust the website if he/she entered in his/her mobile telephone number. A user was considered less trustworthy if he/she visited the site without entering a phone number. The results offered evidence toward their second hypothesis that users trust hotspots less with an image not local to the establishment. There was no significant evidence for their first hypothesis that users will trust a hospot more if there is an image local to the establishment.