Shake Hands to Bedevil: Securing Email with Wearable Technology

Abstract

Emailers seldom encrypt, sometimes because they do not see the need to do this, and sometimes because they do not know how to or are prevented from doing so by the complexity of the facilitating interface. The reality is that encryption is effortful and has to be deliberately undertaken. We propose the use of a wearable device called a Weaver (WEArable EncrypteR). Weaver will be designed to be a mechanism for exchanging encrypted emails that is as simple and effortless as possible to use. Our design philosophy was inspired by the industrial designer Naoto Fukusawa who talks about "design dissolving into behaviour". We want to arrive at seamless secure communication between people who initially meet in person to establish a trusting relationship by "weaving" their devices. This can be subsequently exploited to facilitate the exchange of secure emails between the wearers of the Weavers.