# Managing Access to Confidential Documents: A Case Study of an Email Security Tool
## 5 Results
### First Impressions of an Encrypted Email  
To answer the question of _what users' first impressions are when receiving an encrypted email using an email security tool_, we asked the participants to explore the encrypted email since they did not have any previous experience with sending and receiving encrypted emails. Virtru allows non-Virtru recipients to read an encrypted email without installing it and access the email content via Secure Reader. Therefore, the participants could perform this task without installing the email security tool. Figure 1(a) shows a similar email presented to the participants. The participants were asked what their impression was when they saw this email. They were also asked how they would respond if they received this email from an entity they did not know and why as well as how they would respond if they received this email from an entity they knew. Additionally, they were asked how easy or difficult they think it would be for them to understand the content in this email and how familiar they were with the concept of \"encrypted email\" as described in this email. Regarding the themes of participants' reactions when they first saw an end-to-end encrypted email, two perspectives were categorized when looking at the findings. Some participants had negative impressions when they first saw this encrypted email, such as it looking suspicious (7/19), seeming like spam/phishing email (4/19), or having a confusing interface (1/19). Those who had a positive impression said that it needed verification which felt safe (5/19), had encrypted email content (2/19), seemed more secure and serious (4/19), and had a friendly interface (1/19), as shown in Table 4.  
When asked how they would respond if they received such an email from an entity they did not know, the majority of the participants mentioned they would not open it (8/19). For instance, one of the participants (P17) commented, _\"If I have received an email from an unknown person, I wouldn't open it.\"_ Four participants stated that they would delete the email, two participants would mark it as spam, and one participant mentioned blocking \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c} \hline \hline
**First Impression** & **\# Participants** \\ \hline Looks suspicious & 7/19 \\ Needs verification & 5/19 \\ Seems like spam or phishing email & 4/19 \\ Encrypted message & 2/19 \\ Seems more secure & 4/19 \\ Confusing interface & 1/19 \\ Similar to regular email & 1/19 \\ User-friendly interface & 1/19 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Participants’ first impressions about emails encrypted using Virtru. the email address. Other responses were read it (3/19), verify the sender's email address (2/19), check links (1/19), analyze (1/19), and reply (1/19). In contrast, when we asked how the participants would respond if they received this email from an entity they knew, we found that 7 out of 19 participants would open it. One participant (P1) said, _\"Well, I wouldn't hesitate. I just clicked the Unlock Message button, and I just proceeded to go along with what was happening\"_, and four participants mentioned that they would contact the sender before opening. For instance, (P3) commented, _\"Just ask the sender if this was meant to be sent to me or if it was sent in error\"_, and only one participant mentioned that they would feel safe when receiving this kind of email from a known entity. Moreover, we found that most of our participants (N = 18, 94.8%) stated that it was (somewhat or very) easy for them to understand the text in this email, while 52.6% of the participants were moderately familiar with the concept of encrypted email as described in this email (Figure 2a). A few participants (N = 4, 21.1%) were not at all familiar with the concept of \"encrypted email\" described in this email, whereas another four participants were slightly familiar with this concept.