Three findings regarding privacy online

The Internet now enables firms to collect detailed and potentially intrusive data about their customers both easily and cheaply. I discuss three empirical results related to customer privacy-protection that is enacted in response to this change

“We Were Not Prepared to Tell People Yet”: Confidentiality Breaches and Boundary Turbulence on Facebook

Communication Privacy Management theory provides a framework for investigating confidentiality breaches that occur on Facebook. Open-ended online questionnaires served as mechanism for collecting data about privacy violations and the resulting boundary turbulence. Privacy violations validated three a priori categories (Petronio & Reierson, 2009) of confidentiality breaches (privacy ownership violations, discrepancy breaches of privacy, and pre-emptive privacy control). Findings indicated that the lack of established explicit privacy rules led to privacy violations and boundary turbulence. Results also provided insight regarding motivations of privacy violations, reactions to privacy violations, and the role of privacy rules in the violation

In the nexus of integrity and surveillance: Proctoring (re)considered

Background The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted higher education in many ways, such as the move to Emergency Remote Online Teaching and Learning (EROTL), often including a move to online assessments and examinations. With evidence of increased academic dishonesty in unproctored online assessment, institutions sought ways to ensure academic and institutional integrity and reputation. In doing this, many institutions selected and implemented online proctoring solutions. Objectives This article maps considerations of online proctoring solutions in the nexus between ensuring academic and institutional integrity and reputation, and addressing stakeholder concerns regarding invasive surveillance and the impacts on student privacy. Methods The study involved a PRISMA-informed systematic review of three digital libraries, namely Clarivate's Web of Science, Elsevier's Scopus, and Springer's SpringerLink, for peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings. After screening, a final corpus of 27 articles was analysed. Results and Conclusions The findings include evidence that, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, higher education institutions were largely influenced by cost, usability and efficiency in choosing online proctoring solutions to ensure academic and institutional integrity. Student privacy was either considered in terms of data protection and transparency, or not at all. This article aims to provide valuable insight into the criteria used to select online proctoring solutions to ensure academic and institutional integrity in online examination environments. Student privacy appears not to have the consideration it warrants.publishedVersio

Young people’s perceptions of smartphone-enabled self-testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study

Background Control of sexually transmitted infections (STI) is a global public health priority. Despite the UK’s free, confidential sexual health clinical services, those at greatest risk of STIs, including young people, report barriers to use. These include: embarrassment regarding face-to-face consultations; the time-commitment needed to attend clinic; privacy concerns (e.g. being seen attending clinic); and issues related to confidentiality. A smartphone-enabled STI self-testing device, linked with online clinical care pathways for treatment, partner notification, and disease surveillance, is being developed by the eSTI2 consortium. It is intended to benefit public health, and could do so by increasing testing among populations which underutilise existing services and/or by enabling rapid provision of effective treatment. We explored its acceptability among potential users. Methods In-depth interviews were conducted in 2012 with 25 sexually-experienced 16–24 year olds, recruited from Further Education colleges in an urban, high STI prevalence area. Thematic analysis was undertaken. Results Nine females and 16 males participated. 21 self-defined as Black; three, mixed ethnicity; and one, Muslim/Asian. 22 reported experience of STI testing, two reported previous STI diagnoses, and all had owned smartphones. Participants expressed enthusiasm about the proposed service, and suggested that they and their peers would use it and test more often if it were available. Utilizing sexual healthcare was perceived to be easier and faster with STI self-testing and online clinical care, which facilitated concealment of STI testing from peers/family, and avoided embarrassing face-to-face consultations. Despite these perceived advantages to privacy, new privacy concerns arose regarding communications technology: principally the risk inherent in having evidence of STI testing or diagnosis visible or retrievable on their phone. Some concerns arose regarding the proposed self-test’s accuracy, related to self-operation and the technology’s novelty. Several expressed anxiety around the possibility of being diagnosed and treated without any contact with healthcare professionals. Conclusions Remote STI self-testing and online care appealed to these young people. It addressed barriers they associated with conventional STI services, thus may benefit public health through earlier detection and treatment. Our findings underpin development of online care pathways, as part of ongoing research to create this complex e-health intervention

Examining older users’ online privacy-enhancing experience from a human-computer interaction perspective

The advancement of Internet technologies, including instant and unlimited access to information and services, has been an excellent source of support for older adults. However, pervasive and continuous online tracking can pose severe threats to older adults’ information privacy. Surprisingly, very few empirical studies have focused on older users’ online privacy-enhancing experience from a Human-Computer Interaction perspective. Therefore, it remains unclear how older users protect their online information privacy and what factors influence their online behaviors. Thus, my thesis aims to study older users’ online privacy-enhancing experience by examining the following questions: 1) what older users know and do to protect their online information privacy, 2) how their emotional state influences their adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), and 3) what usability challenges they encounter while using one of the most popular PETs currently available to the public. To examine these questions, a diverse set of empirical approaches was adopted, including a survey, a quasi-experiment, and a usability study. My research findings suggest that three are three elements that play a crucial role in older users' online privacy-enhancing practices. First, older users' knowledge of online privacy has a significant influence on their daily online privacy protection behaviors. In addition, there seems to be a privacy knowledge gap among older users that reveals the phenomenon of ‘Privacy Divide.' Second, the design of privacy-enhancing features affects older users’ emotional state and their attitudes regarding their future adoption of the tool. Third, the findings of usability study indicate that the current design of a privacy- enhancing browsing tool, Tor Browser, poses particular challenges for older users. For instance, the technical terminologies and recurring warning messages have made Tor Browser more difficult for older users to use. These usability challenges not only decrease older users’ satisfaction in but also deter their future adoption of the tool. Therefore, it is crucial that current design of PETs considers older users’ needs. My thesis research contributes to the privacy literature in several ways. First of all, this is the first empirical research examining older users’ actual online privacy protection behaviors. In addition, this thesis includes the very first empirical study that illustrate the importance of the role of emotion in users’ adoption of a privacy-enhancing tool. Furthermore, this thesis provides usability recommendations that can improve the current design of Tor Browser for older user audiences. As the world's aging population continues to grow and advances in Internet technologies progress rapidly, the design of future technologies, from smart homes to self-driving cars, has to adopt user-centered approach, which consider end-users' needs of all age groups. Also, information privacy has become a significant aspect in our digital world, which makes the design of user-friendly privacy-enhancing tools an essential mission ahead of us. Moreover, knowledge and awareness are a key factor in older users’ online privacy- enhancing practices. Henceforth, creating educational programs for older adults is extremely important in protecting their online privacy

PERCEIVED RISK WHEN BUYING ONLINE: EVIDENCE FROM A SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW

In order to gain deeper understanding in consumers’ perceptions regarding risk involved when buying online, a semi-structured interview was employed. 30 internet users that have purchased a product or service using the Internet within the last three months were questioned regarding their fears when deciding to buy from an e-commerce web site. The respondents were selected according to a stratified sampling technique. Based on the respondents’ answers but also taking into consideration previous empirical findings, I classify different types of perceived risk into: financial risk, privacy risk, performance risk, delivery risk, time risk, psychological risk and social risk. The results show that Romanian consumers perceive a high degree of risk when conducting an electronic transaction, which could be the reason why Romania has a small e-commerce adoption rate although the internet penetration rate is quite high. Further managerial implications are discussed

Rethinking privacy in social networks: A case study of beacon

Popular online social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Bebo are technological platforms that are posing questions about personal privacy. This paper contributes to our understanding of the nature and form of online privacy by critically analysing the issues surrounding the failed launch of Facebook’s advertising tool Beacon. Beacon is an interesting case study because it highlighted the complexity of information ownership in an online social network. Qualitative data was gathered from 29 weblogs (blogs) representing user opinions published between 6th November 2007(when Beacon was launched) and 28th February 2008 (when commentary had dwindled). A thematic analysis of the blogs suggest that concerns such as commercialism, terms of service (TOS), lack of user control, lack of user awareness and data protection are factors that influence user perceptions of information ownership as a subset of online privacy