论文标题
“所有人都声称自己是最好的”：VPN用户和VPN提供商的多人研究
"All of them claim to be the best": Multi-perspective study of VPN users and VPN providers
论文作者
论文摘要
由于越来越多的用户出于各种原因采用VPN，因此重要的是要了解其需求和VPN提供的精神模型的经验知识。此外，仅研究VPN用户是不够的，因为通过使用VPN，用户本质上将信任（从其网络提供商）转移到VPN提供商。为此，我们是第一个从用户和提供商的角度研究VPN生态系统的人。在本文中，我们对美国的1,252名VPN用户进行了定量调查，并对9个提供者进行了定性访谈，以回答有关用户的动机，需求，威胁模型和心理模型的几个研究问题，以及VPN提供者的主要挑战和见解。我们通过增强我们的多观点结果来创建新颖的见解，并突出显示用户和提供商观点未对准的情况。令人震惊的是，我们发现用户依靠和信任VPN审核网站，但是VPN提供商阐明了这些网站主要是由金钱激励的。令人担忧的是，我们发现用户对VPN提供的保护和VPN收集的数据有缺陷的心理模型。我们通过确定要集中精力并改善VPN生态系统的潜在领域，为技术人员以及安全和隐私倡导者提出了可行的建议。
As more users adopt VPNs for a variety of reasons, it is important to develop empirical knowledge of their needs and mental models of what a VPN offers. Moreover, studying VPN users alone is not enough because, by using a VPN, a user essentially transfers trust, say from their network provider, onto the VPN provider. To that end, we are the first to study the VPN ecosystem from both the users' and the providers' perspectives. In this paper, we conduct a quantitative survey of 1,252 VPN users in the U.S. and qualitative interviews of nine providers to answer several research questions regarding the motivations, needs, threat model, and mental model of users, and the key challenges and insights from VPN providers. We create novel insights by augmenting our multi-perspective results, and highlight cases where the user and provider perspectives are misaligned. Alarmingly, we find that users rely on and trust VPN review sites, but VPN providers shed light on how these sites are mostly motivated by money. Worryingly, we find that users have flawed mental models about the protection VPNs provide, and about data collected by VPNs. We present actionable recommendations for technologists and security and privacy advocates by identifying potential areas on which to focus efforts and improve the VPN ecosystem.
