Couldn't or Wouldn't? the Influence of Privacy Concerns and Self-Efficacy in Privacy Management on Privacy Protection

Sampling 515 college students, this study investigates how privacy protection, including profile visibility, self-disclosure, and friending, are influenced by privacy concerns and efficacy regarding one's own ability to manage privacy settings, a factor that researchers have yet to give a great deal of attention to in the context of social networking sites (SNSs). The results of this study indicate an inconsistency in adopting strategies to protect privacy, a disconnect from limiting profile visibility and friending to self-disclosure. More specifically, privacy concerns lead SNS users to limit their profile visibility and discourage them from expanding their network. However, they do not constrain self-disclosure. Similarly, while self-efficacy in privacy management encourages SNS users to limit their profile visibility, it facilitates self-disclosure. This suggests that if users are limiting their profile visibility and constraining their friending behaviors, it does not necessarily mean they will reduce self-disclosure on SNSs because these behaviors are predicted by different factors. In addition, the study finds an interaction effect between privacy concerns and self-efficacy in privacy management on friending. It points to the potential problem of increased risk-taking behaviors resulting from high self-efficacy in privacy management and low privacy concerns.Radio-Television-Fil

Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Media Corporations: Incorporating Human Rights Through Rankings, Self-Regulation and Shareholder Resolutions

This article examines the emergence and evolution of selected ranking and reporting frameworks in the expanding realm of business and human rights advocacy. It explores how indicators in the form of rankings and reports evaluating the conduct of transnational corporate actors can serve as regulatory tools with potential to bridge a global governance gap that often places human rights at risk. Specifically, this article examines the relationship of transnational corporations in the Internet communications technology sector (ICT sector) to human rights and the risks presented to the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy when ICT sector companies comply with government demands to disclose user data or to conceal information users seek. Specifically, it explores the controversial role of transnational ICT corporations in state censorship and surveillance practices. The article explains how conflicts over corporate complicity in alleged abuses served to catalyze change and lead to the creation of the Global Network Initiative, a private multi-stakeholder project, and the Ranking Digital Rights Initiative, an industry independent market-based information effort. Both aim to promote more responsible business practices in the social media industry sector. In conclusion, the article argues that regulating corporate reporting of information relevant to assessing the potential for adverse human rights impacts is necessary

A Storm in an IoT Cup: The Emergence of Cyber-Physical Social Machines

The concept of social machines is increasingly being used to characterise various socio-cognitive spaces on the Web. Social machines are human collectives using networked digital technology which initiate real-world processes and activities including human communication, interactions and knowledge creation. As such, they continuously emerge and fade on the Web. The relationship between humans and machines is made more complex by the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and devices. The scale, automation, continuous sensing, and actuation capabilities of these devices add an extra dimension to the relationship between humans and machines making it difficult to understand their evolution at either the systemic or the conceptual level. This article describes these new socio-technical systems, which we term Cyber-Physical Social Machines, through different exemplars, and considers the associated challenges of security and privacy.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Measures of Privacy Protection on Social Environments

Tesis por compendio[EN] Nowadays, online social networks (OSNs) have become a mainstream cultural phenomenon for millions of Internet users. Social networks are an ideal environment for generating all kinds of social benefits for users. Users share experiences, keep in touch with their family, friends and acquaintances, and earn economic benefits from the power of their influence (which is translated into new job opportunities). However, the use of social networks and the action of sharing information imply the loss of the users’ privacy. Recently, a great interest in protecting the privacy of users has emerged. This situation has been due to documented cases of regrets in users’ actions, company scandals produced by misuse of personal information, and the biases introduced by privacy mechanisms. Social network providers have included improvements in their systems to reduce users’ privacy risks; for example, restricting privacy policies by default, adding new privacy settings, and designing quick and easy shortcuts to configure user privacy settings. In the privacy researcher area, new advances are proposed to improve privacy mechanisms, most of them focused on automation, fine-grained systems, and the usage of features extracted from the user’s profile information and interactions to recommend the best privacy policy for the user. Despite these advances, many studies have shown that users’ concern for privacy does not match the decisions they ultimately make in social networks. This misalignment in the users’ behavior might be due to the complexity of the privacy concept itself. This drawback causes users to disregard privacy risks, or perceive them as temporarily distant. Another cause of users’ behavior misalignment might be due to the complexity of the privacy decision-making process. This is because users should consider all possible scenarios and the factors involved (e.g., the number of friends, the relationship type, the context of the information, etc.) to make an appropriate privacy decision. The main contributions of this thesis are the development of metrics to assess privacy risks, and the proposal of explainable privacy mechanisms (using the developed metrics) to assist and raise awareness among users during the privacy decision process. Based on the definition of the concept of privacy, the dimensions of information scope and information sensitivity have been considered in this thesis to assess privacy risks. For explainable privacy mechanisms, soft paternalism techniques and gamification elements that make use of the proposed metrics have been designed. These mechanisms have been integrated into the social network PESEDIA and evaluated in experiments with real users. PESEDIA is a social network developed in the framework of the Master’s thesis of the Ph.D. student [15], this thesis, and the national projects “Privacy in Social Educational Environments during Childhood and Adolescence” (TIN2014-55206- R) and “Intelligent Agents for Privacy Advice in Social Networks” (TIN2017-89156-R). The findings confirm the validity of the proposed metrics for computing the users’ scope and the sensitivity of social network publications. For the scope metric, the results also showed the possibility of estimating it through local and social centrality metrics for scenarios with limited information access. For the sensitivity metric, the results also remarked the users’ misalignment for some information types and the consensus for a majority of them. The usage of these metrics as part of messages about potential consequences of privacy policy choices and information sharing actions to users showed positive effects on users’ behavior regarding privacy. Furthermore, the findings of exploring the users’ trade-off between costs and benefits during disclosure actions of personal information showed significant relationships with the usual social circles (family members, friends, coworkers, and unknown users) and their properties. This allowed designing better privacy mechanisms that appropriately restrict access to information and reduce regrets. Finally, gamification elements applied to social networks and users’ privacy showed a positive effect on the users’ behavior towards privacy and safe practices in social networks.[ES] En la actualidad, las redes sociales se han convertido en un fenómeno cultural dominante para millones de usuarios de Internet. Las redes sociales son un entorno ideal para la generación de todo tipo de beneficios sociales para los usuarios. Los usuarios comparten experiencias, mantienen el contacto con sus familiares, amigos y conocidos, y obtienen beneficios económicos gracias al poder de su influencia (lo que se traduce en nuevas oportunidades de trabajo). Sin embargo, el uso de las redes sociales y la acción de compartir información implica la perdida de la privacidad de los usuarios. Recientemente ha emergido un gran interés en proteger la privacidad de los usuarios. Esta situación se ha debido a los casos de arrepentimientos documentados en las acciones de los usuarios, escándalos empresariales producidos por usos indebidos de la información personal, y a los sesgos que introducen los mecanismos de privacidad. Los proveedores de redes sociales han incluido mejoras en sus sistemas para reducir los riesgos en privacidad de los usuarios; por ejemplo, restringiendo las políticas de privacidad por defecto, añadiendo nuevos elementos de configuración de la privacidad, y diseñando accesos fáciles y directos para configurar la privacidad de los usuarios. En el campo de la investigación de la privacidad, nuevos avances se proponen para mejorar los mecanismos de privacidad la mayoría centrados en la automatización, selección de grano fino, y uso de características extraídas de la información y sus interacciones para recomendar la mejor política de privacidad para el usuario. A pesar de estos avances, muchos estudios han demostrado que la preocupación de los usuarios por la privacidad no se corresponde con las decisiones que finalmente toman en las redes sociales. Este desajuste en el comportamiento de los usuarios podría deberse a la complejidad del propio concepto de privacidad. Este inconveniente hace que los usuarios ignoren los riesgos de privacidad, o los perciban como temporalmente distantes. Otra causa del desajuste en el comportamiento de los usuarios podría deberse a la complejidad del proceso de toma de decisiones sobre la privacidad. Esto se debe a que los usuarios deben considerar todos los escenarios posibles y los factores involucrados (por ejemplo, el número de amigos, el tipo de relación, el contexto de la información, etc.) para tomar una decisión apropiada sobre la privacidad. Las principales contribuciones de esta tesis son el desarrollo de métricas para evaluar los riesgos de privacidad, y la propuesta de mecanismos de privacidad explicables (haciendo uso de las métricas desarrolladas) para asistir y concienciar a los usuarios durante el proceso de decisión sobre la privacidad. Atendiendo a la definición del concepto de la privacidad, las dimensiones del alcance de la información y la sensibilidad de la información se han considerado en esta tesis para evaluar los riesgos de privacidad. En cuanto a los mecanismos de privacidad explicables, se han diseñado utilizando técnicas de paternalismo blando y elementos de gamificación que hacen uso de las métricas propuestas. Estos mecanismos se han integrado en la red social PESEDIA y evaluado en experimentos con usuarios reales. PESEDIA es una red social desarrollada en el marco de la tesina de Master del doctorando [15], esta tesis y los proyectos nacionales “Privacidad en Entornos Sociales Educativos durante la Infancia y la Adolescencia” (TIN2014-55206-R) y “Agentes inteligentes para asesorar en privacidad en redes sociales” (TIN2017-89156-R). Los resultados confirman la validez de las métricas propuestas para calcular el alcance de los usuarios y la sensibilidad de las publicaciones de las redes sociales. En cuanto a la métrica del alcance, los resultados también mostraron la posibilidad de estimarla mediante métricas de centralidad local y social para escenarios con acceso limitado a la información. En cuanto a la métrica de sensibilidad, los resultados también pusieron de manifiesto la falta de concordancia de los usuarios en el caso de algunos tipos de información y el consenso en el caso de la mayoría de ellos. El uso de estas métricas como parte de los mensajes sobre las posibles consecuencias de las opciones de política de privacidad y las acciones de intercambio de información a los usuarios mostró efectos positivos en el comportamiento de los usuarios con respecto a la privacidad. Además, los resultados de la exploración de la compensación de los usuarios entre los costos y los beneficios durante las acciones de divulgación de información personal mostraron relaciones significativas con los círculos sociales habituales (familiares, amigos, compañeros de trabajo y usuarios desconocidos) y sus propiedades. Esto permitió diseñar mejores mecanismos de privacidad que restringen adecuadamente el acceso a la información y reducen los arrepentimientos. Por último, los elementos de gamificación aplicados a las redes sociales y a la privacidad de los usuarios mostraron un efecto positivo en el comportamiento de los usuarios hacia la privacidad y las prácticas seguras en las redes sociales.[CA] En l’actualitat, les xarxes socials s’han convertit en un fenomen cultural dominant per a milions d’usuaris d’Internet. Les xarxes socials són un entorn ideal per a la generació de tota mena de beneficis socials per als usuaris. Els usuaris comparteixen experiències, mantenen el contacte amb els seus familiars, amics i coneguts, i obtenen beneficis econòmics gràcies al poder de la seva influència (el que es tradueix en noves oportunitats de treball). No obstant això, l’ús de les xarxes socials i l’acció de compartir informació implica la perduda de la privacitat dels usuaris. Recentment ha emergit un gran interès per protegir la privacitat dels usuaris. Aquesta situació s’ha degut als casos de penediments documentats en les accions dels usuaris, escàndols empresarials produïts per usos indeguts de la informació personal, i als caires que introdueixen els mecanismes de privacitat. Els proveïdors de xarxes socials han inclòs millores en els seus sistemes per a reduir els riscos en privacitat dels usuaris; per exemple, restringint les polítiques de privacitat per defecte, afegint nous elements de configuració de la privacitat, i dissenyant accessos fàcils i directes per a configurar la privacitat dels usuaris. En el camp de la recerca de la privacitat, nous avanços es proposen per a millorar els mecanismes de privacitat la majoria centrats en l’automatització, selecció de gra fi, i ús de característiques extretes de la informació i les seues interaccions per a recomanar la millor política de privacitat per a l’usuari. Malgrat aquests avanços, molts estudis han demostrat que la preocupació dels usuaris per la privacitat no es correspon amb les decisions que finalment prenen en les xarxes socials. Aquesta desalineació en el comportament dels usuaris podria deure’s a la complexitat del propi concepte de privacitat. Aquest inconvenient fa que els usuaris ignorin els riscos de privacitat, o els percebin com temporalment distants. Una altra causa de la desalineació en el comportament dels usuaris podria deure’s a la complexitat del procés de presa de decisions sobre la privacitat. Això es deu al fet que els usuaris han de considerar tots els escenaris possibles i els factors involucrats (per exemple, el nombre d’amics, el tipus de relació, el context de la informació, etc.) per a prendre una decisió apropiada sobre la privacitat. Les principals contribucions d’aquesta tesi són el desenvolupament de mètriques per a avaluar els riscos de privacitat, i la proposta de mecanismes de privacitat explicables (fent ús de les mètriques desenvolupades) per a assistir i conscienciar als usuaris durant el procés de decisió sobre la privacitat. Atesa la definició del concepte de la privacitat, les dimensions de l’abast de la informació i la sensibilitat de la informació s’han considerat en aquesta tesi per a avaluar els riscos de privacitat. Respecte als mecanismes de privacitat explicables, aquests s’han dissenyat utilitzant tècniques de paternalisme bla i elements de gamificació que fan ús de les mètriques propostes. Aquests mecanismes s’han integrat en la xarxa social PESEDIA i avaluat en experiments amb usuaris reals. PESEDIA és una xarxa social desenvolupada en el marc de la tesina de Màster del doctorant [15], aquesta tesi i els projectes nacionals “Privacitat en Entorns Socials Educatius durant la Infància i l’Adolescència” (TIN2014-55206-R) i “Agents Intel·ligents per a assessorar en Privacitat en xarxes socials” (TIN2017-89156-R). Els resultats confirmen la validesa de les mètriques propostes per a calcular l’abast de les accions dels usuaris i la sensibilitat de les publicacions de les xarxes socials. Respecte a la mètrica de l’abast, els resultats també van mostrar la possibilitat d’estimarla mitjançant mètriques de centralitat local i social per a escenaris amb accés limitat a la informació. Respecte a la mètrica de sensibilitat, els resultats també van posar de manifest la falta de concordança dels usuaris en el cas d’alguns tipus d’informació i el consens en el cas de la majoria d’ells. L’ús d’aquestes mètriques com a part dels missatges sobre les possibles conseqüències de les opcions de política de privacitat i les accions d’intercanvi d’informació als usuaris va mostrar efectes positius en el comportament dels usuaris respecte a la privacitat. A més, els resultats de l’exploració de la compensació dels usuaris entre els costos i els beneficis durant les accions de divulgació d’informació personal van mostrar relacions significatives amb els cercles socials habituals (familiars, amics, companys de treball i usuaris desconeguts) i les seves propietats. Això ha permés dissenyar millors mecanismes de privacitat que restringeixen adequadament l’accés a la informació i redueixen els penediments. Finalment, els elements de gamificació aplicats a les xarxes socials i a la privacitat dels usuaris van mostrar un efecte positiu en el comportament dels usuaris cap a la privacitat i les pràctiques segures en les xarxes socials.Alemany Bordera, J. (2020). Measures of Privacy Protection on Social Environments [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/151456TESISCompendi

Privacy by ReDesign: Alleviating Privacy Concerns for Third-Party Apps

In online social networks, the aggressive way of data access and transmission by third-party applications (apps) has made privacy concerns particularly salient. Users\u27 private information can be easily revealed by their and even their friends\u27 use of apps. A heightened need for empowering user control for third-party apps arises due to the inability to monitor the data use by app providers within and outside of the social networking platform and the inherent uncertainty about their privacy practices. Drawing on the theoretical framework developed by Malhotra et al. (2004), we propose two improved designs of privacy authorization dialogues to encompass control and awareness as the essential factors to address users\u27 privacy concerns toward third-party apps on Facebook. The approach of Privacy by ReDesign is employed to investigate whether users can more adequately represent their preferences for sharing and releasing personal information with these two improved designs

Empowering users regarding the sensitivity of their data in social networks through nudge mechanisms

The use of online social networks (OSNs) is a continuous trade-off between relinquishing some privacy in exchange for getting some social benefits like maintaining (or creating new) relationships, getting support, influencing others’ opinions, etc. OSN users are faced with this decision each time they share information. The amount of information or its sensitivity is directly related to the amount of users’ loss of privacy. Currently, there are several approaches for assessing the sensitivity of the information based on the willingness of users to provide them, the monetary benefits derived from extracting knowledge of them, the amount of information they provide, etc. In this work, we focus on quantifying data sensitivity as the combination of all of the approaches and adapting them to the OSN domain. Furthermore, we propose a way of scoring publication sensitivity as the accumulative value of the sensitivity of the information types included in it. Finally, an experiment with 196 teenagers was carried out to assess the effectiveness of empowering users regarding the sensitivity of the publication. The results show a significant effect on users’ privacy behavior by the nudge message and the sensitivity included in it

Moving from a "human-as-problem" to a "human-as-solution" cybersecurity mindset

Cybersecurity has gained prominence, with a number of widely publicised security incidents, hacking attacks and data breaches reaching the news over the last few years. The escalation in the numbers of cyber incidents shows no sign of abating, and it seems appropriate to take a look at the way cybersecurity is conceptualised and to consider whether there is a need for a mindset change.To consider this question, we applied a "problematization" approach to assess current conceptualisations of the cybersecurity problem by government, industry and hackers. Our analysis revealed that individual human actors, in a variety of roles, are generally considered to be "a problem". We also discovered that deployed solutions primarily focus on preventing adverse events by building resistance: i.e. implementing new security layers and policies that control humans and constrain their problematic behaviours. In essence, this treats all humans in the system as if they might well be malicious actors, and the solutions are designed to prevent their ill-advised behaviours. Given the continuing incidences of data breaches and successful hacks, it seems wise to rethink the status quo approach, which we refer to as "Cybersecurity, Currently". In particular, we suggest that there is a need to reconsider the core assumptions and characterisations of the well-intentioned human's role in the cybersecurity socio-technical system. Treating everyone as a problem does not seem to work, given the current cyber security landscape.Benefiting from research in other fields, we propose a new mindset i.e. "Cybersecurity, Differently". This approach rests on recognition of the fact that the problem is actually the high complexity, interconnectedness and emergent qualities of socio-technical systems. The "differently" mindset acknowledges the well-intentioned human's ability to be an important contributor to organisational cybersecurity, as well as their potential to be "part of the solution" rather than "the problem". In essence, this new approach initially treats all humans in the system as if they are well-intentioned. The focus is on enhancing factors that contribute to positive outcomes and resilience. We conclude by proposing a set of key principles and, with the help of a prototypical fictional organisation, consider how this mindset could enhance and improve cybersecurity across the socio-technical system

Information and communication technology solutions for outdoor navigation in dementia

INTRODUCTION: Information and communication technology (ICT) is potentially mature enough to empower outdoor and social activities in dementia. However, actual ICT-based devices have limited functionality and impact, mainly limited to safety. What is an ideal operational framework to enhance this field to support outdoor and social activities? METHODS: Review of literature and cross-disciplinary expert discussion. RESULTS: A situation-aware ICT requires a flexible fine-tuning by stakeholders of system usability and complexity of function, and of user safety and autonomy. It should operate by artificial intelligence/machine learning and should reflect harmonized stakeholder values, social context, and user residual cognitive functions. ICT services should be proposed at the prodromal stage of dementia and should be carefully validated within the life space of users in terms of quality of life, social activities, and costs. DISCUSSION: The operational framework has the potential to produce ICT and services with high clinical impact but requires substantial investment