Information Technology Division, Institute of Public Administration, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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Abstract—Over the past decade, Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have been providing benefits and opportunities for millions of users. However, attackers and deceptive users have been trying to take advantage of SNSs popularity and launch many types of attacks such as phishing, click-jacking, spamming, malware, or providing misleading and false information. Past research showed that SNSs users are more vulnerable to many security attacks than any other media such as email, electronic newspaper or any other online environment. Yet little research has empirically explored the characteristics of the virtual environments of SNSs, which make users such vulnerable. Using ethnography method, existing study has pointed eight factors that influence inattentional blindness of SNSs users, and therefore make them vulnerable to security threats in SNSs.

Index Terms—Information security, cybersecurity, social networking sites, social media, inattentional blindness, perceptual blindness.

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Cite: Abdullah Algarni, "Inattentional Blindness Factors that Make People Vulnerable to Security Threats in Social Networking Sites," Journal of Computers vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 184-194, 2019.