Support for Sharing Online Accounts

Studies show that people share their online accounts, citing reasons such as convenience and trust. The types of these accounts range from social (e.g., Gmail, Facebook), to lifestyle (e.g., Amazon), to utility (e.g., home internet account), and many other online accounts found on their smartphones and other devices. However, the majority of these accounts have not originally been designed to be shared among multiple users. As such, users often come up with insecure methods to circumvent the current design of online accounts, so as to satisfy their need for account sharing. Ending such sharing also becomes a challenge. This project aims to investigate how online accounts can be designed to better support sharing and the end of sharing, while protecting privacy and security of users’ involved in the sharing.