Friendly Folk Advice: Exploring Cybersecurity Information Sharing in Nigeria.

The risk of cyber crimes continues to increase as more Nigerians continue to adopt digital and online tools and services. However, we do not know enough about citizens’ understanding of cybersecurity behaviours and habits. In this paper, we explored the cybersecurity behaviours of Nigerians using a mixed-methods approach to understand how citizens stay safe online. Using a survey, we collected data (n = 208) on how citizens protect themselves online and where they get cybersecurity advice from. We then further explored the reported behaviours using semi-structured interviews (n = 22). We found that Nigerian citizens discussed cybersecurity incidents openly and shared tips and advice with peers through social media and through broadcasts on messaging platforms. We discovered that this has resulted in relatively high adoption rates for protective technologies like 2FA, particularly on WhatsApp. However, we also report how the adoption of 2FA on one account did not necessarily lead to enabling it on other accounts and how some citizens were being socially engineered to bypass those 2FA protections. Finally, we discuss some recommendations for how tools could provide more information to improve users’ understanding of both security threats and the countermeasures the tools offer.