The Affect of Familiarity on the Usability of Recognition-Based Graphical Passwords: Cross Cultural Study between Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Recognition-based graphical password have been proposed as an alternative to overcome the drawbacks of the alphanumeric password in user authentication. A web-based study was performed to determine the cultural impact on the usability of recognition-based graphical password. A number of participants (Saudi and British) selected their graphical passwords from a set of pictures representing different cultures. After three months, they were asked to login using their graphical passwords. For the registration stage, our results show that users were highly affected by their culture when they chose pictures for their graphical password. However, Saudis were significantly more affected by their culture than British. Also, there was no evidence that gender can affect the participant's choice when it comes to select graphical password from pictures belonging to their culture. For the authentication stage, the main results show that the memorability rate for graphical passwords consisting of only pictures belonging to participants' culture was higher than the memorability rate for graphical passwords consisted of pictures which did not belong to participants' culture. Also, there was no evidence that the participants, who had graphical passwords based on their cultures, will have less time to login than other participants, who had non-cultural based graphical passwords.