The paper ' "In my opinion, the auditing steps are sufficient." - Trust in elections, software, and RLAs' by Christian Mack, Tobias Hilt and Melanie Volkamer was accepted for publication at the International Conference for Electronic Voting (EVote ID 2026). This paper presents an interview study on the software-supported evaluation of local elections in Baden-Württemberg and possible audit procedures. Participants in the interview study were asked about their trust in current processes and their attitudes toward potential audit procedures. EVote ID takes place October 6 to 9, 2026 in Tallinn, Estonia.

The report for the Dagstuhl Seminar “Trustworthy Evidence-Based Election” is now available. The seminar took place from October 5 to 10, 2025. The seminar aimed to bring together experts in secure electronic voting, cryptography, verified software, statistics, and human-computer interfaces - from academia, industry, and government organizations - to evaluate past successes and failures, review the state of the art, discuss emerging challenges such as quantum-safe cryptography, and identify future solutions for secure and privacy-preserving voting methods. The seminar was organized by Melanie Volkamer together with Josh Benaloh (Microsoft Corporation), Peter Rønne (University of Luxembourg), and Philip Stark (University of California).

The paper “Phishing URLs versus Phishing E-Mails" by Leoni Schmidt-Enke, Benjamin Berens, Anne Hennig, Daniela Reimer, and Melanie Volkamer was published in the May edition (volume 50) of the journal "Datenschutz und Datensicherheit (DuD)" (data protection and data security). This article examines the various strategies cybercriminals use to create links in fraudulent messages and provides recommendations for awareness-raising measures based on these findings.

On June 19, Karlsruhe will once again celebrate Bunte Nacht der Digitalisierung with a diverse program of events throughout the city. The citizens' panel ‘Wir forschen digital’ will also be there with a booth at City Hall! Are you interested in digital technologies and can you imagine participating in a study yourself? Stop by and learn more about our current research. We’ll be joined by STAR, our Security Teaching and Awareness Robot, who educates people about phishing.