Understanding the Contextual Privacy Comprehension, Attitudes, and Behaviours of Users

Anonymous

TL;DR: Users were asked about their privacy settings before and after a tutorial and at a 2-week follow-up to explore understanding and decision making regarding privacy online.

Abstract: To understand and protect their privacy in a world of pervasive data collection, users must understand not only disclosure, but also the transmission and third-party use of their data both in the present and future. Researchers label this phenomenon the contextual integrity of information. While many security and privacy researchers seek to design automated tools to enforce contextual integrity through formally specified policies, this paper explores users' understanding of contextual integrity and their ability to influence it as they learn. We explore whether, by educating participants, participants are more likely to understand and control for the long-term implications of information disclosure. We find that participants do develop an understanding of contextual integrity, but continue to struggle with effective methods to protect the contextual integrity of their data. Together, these results provide guidelines for the design of privacy-preserving technologies with learning and comprehension as guiding principles.

Track: HCI/visualization