The latest special issue of Behaviour & Information Technology (Volume 41, Issue 7, 2022), co-edited by CROSSING-PI professor Christian Reuter (research group PEASEC, TU Darmstadt), provides an overview of recent contributions to research on usable security and privacy, focusing on user-centric interventions and transparency mechanisms. With respect to such user-centric interventions, the concepts and tools presented in the issue particularly consider the aspects of transparency and tailorability. Difficulties and challenges arising from the various requirements of different application contexts and end-user groups are addressed through a number of technical and conceptual approaches.

In addressing the needs of users while at the same time presenting user-friendly ways for behavior that enhances privacy and security, the authors of the six featured articles have covered a variety of topics, ranging from (1) data privacy concerns in the era of COVID-19, (2) authentication on mobile devices, (3) GDPR-compliant data management, (4) privacy notices on websites, (5) data disclosure scenarios in agriculture, to (6) data privacy rights and the specific procedure when data subjects want to claim these rights. In one of the contributions, professor Reuter and his doctoral student Katrin Hartwig present their article “Nudging users towards better security decisions in password creation using whitebox-based multidimensional visualisations”. The research work has partially been funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) through the collaborative research center CROSSING.