On the Limited Impact of Visualizing Encryption: Perceptions of E2E Messaging Security
summary
Five online studies with 683 participants (MTurk then Prolific) test WhatsApp-style screencasts and a renamed app "Erebus" to see if making E2E visible changes trust. Six text disclosures, three icons, and three animations (disappearing, scrambling, progress circle) are compared; a simple "messages to this chat are now encrypted" text improves perceptions, icons reduce them, and animations barely move trust. Findings show user beliefs and app reputation matter more than visualizations.
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