Contemporary Research in Human

Computer Interaction

Winter 2010

Privacy and Social Intelligibility

Dr. Eran Toch

Second Workshop on Intelligibility and Control in Pervasive Computing

June 2012

Social Intelligibility

In social intelligibility, the application provides intelligible context to the user’s social relations.

‣ Let’s introduce Careless Contexts.

‣ A hypothetical social contexts applications.

‣ It is intelligible,

‣ But somewhat careless.

‣ Clicking on “Why?”, explains the availability with:

‣ Location

‣ Sound activity

‣ Sharing rules

‣ Motion

‣ Schedule4

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Agenda

1. Properties of social intelligibility

2. Privacy tensions

3. Conclusions

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(1) Properties of social intelligibility

Intelligibility in Social Context

‣ Many situations in social applications are uncertain:

‣ Is it a good time to call someone? To email?

‣ Did a friend received my message?

‣ Does a Facebook friend sees my status in her feed?

‣ Technically, social intelligibility can reduce this uncertainty in these situations. 7

Social Intelligibility

Explanations about the primary user are provided to the secondary users, regarding:

‣ Sensor information (e.g., context, messages)

‣ Inference processes (e.g., certainty, algorithms)

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Unrestricted Driving

9Janne Lindqvist and Jason Hong. Undistracted Driving: A Mobile Phone that Doesn’t Distract, in HotMobile 2011

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(2) Privacy tensions in Social

Intelligibility

Theoretical Framework

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Utility• Uncertai

nty reduction

• Signaling theory

Privacy• Boundar

y regulation

• Contextual integrity

Insights from a qualitative study (n=10)

B. Lim, E. Toch, O. Rave, and A. Anind. Intelligibility vs. privacy: Investigating attitudes towards sharing intelligible contexts in a context-aware application (2012), Unpublished

Reducing uncertainty will change the way applications are used.

P9: If everybody had this application, it would be great. I would not need to put my phone on silent and miss important calls.

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The process is dialectic. People’s expectations of other people will

change

P1: In a meeting without the [intelligibility] technology, I would not answer a call. But if my mother would call, and the technology is on, then surly there is a good reason, and I would answer.

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Intelligibility can be used as an honest signal to note and to

establish trust

P2: I have a boyfriend, for many years, and there is a lot of openness between us, I don't have anything to hide from him, and he does not have anything to hide from me, that’s why I want to share [these contexts]… I want to show him that.

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Boundary Regulation

Altman (1975): “privacy is a boundary regulation process whereby people optimize their accessibility along a spectrum of ‘openness’ and ‘closeness’ depending on context”

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I. Altman, The Environment and Social Behavior: Privacy, Personal Space, Territory, Crowding. Brooks/Cole, 1975.

Can intelligibility provide effective control to users? Would

it enable them to lie?

P9: Its too much information to be shared. Its impossible to lie with that much information.

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Can intelligibility maintain users’ contextual integrity?

P10: I do not want other people to know how I filter the information. If I have two colleagues: one knows only that I am in a meeting, and the other knows in which meeting I was… I do not want this information to be transparent.

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(3) Conclusions

Trust and Privacy

‣ Establishing trust is one of the unique qualities of intelligibility.

‣ Because intelligibility is automated, it is uniquely posed to establish trust between users.

‣ But as a by product of the automation, it is much more difficult for users to manage their boundary regulation.

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What do we need?

‣ User studies: to understand people’s concerns, approaches, and behaviors.

‣ New systems: to introduce new ideas and new challenges.

‣ Control mechanisms: to help users balance privacy and utility.

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Dr. Eran Toch

Thank you!

More info at:

http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~eran/

Signaling Theory

Zahavi proposed the “Handicap Principle”: ...[F]or every message there is an optimal signal, which best amplifies the asymmetry between an honest signaller and a cheater. For example, wasting money is a reliable signal for wealth because a cheater, a poor individual claiming to be rich, does not have money to throw away;

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Zahavi, A. 1993b.The fallacy of conventional signalling. The Royal Society Philosophical Transaction B. 340. 227-230.

Implementations

‣ Signaling in virtual communities

‣ JS Donath, Identity and deception in the virtual community, Communities in cyberspace, 1999

‣ Signaling in Online Social Networks

‣ Cliff A.C. Lampe, Nicole Ellison, and Charles Steinfield. 2007. A familiar face(book): profile elements as signals in an online social network, CHI’07

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Automating human-to-human interaction

P6: and I would be very happy if my little brother, who is texting all the time while driving, can use something that show other people that he is unavailable.

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Insights

‣ Taken from semi-structured interviews about privacy approaches and expected utility (n=11).

‣ The qualitative part of a combined quantitative/qualitative survey:

B. Lim, E. Toch, O. Rave, and A. Anind. Intelligibility vs. privacy: Investigating attitudes towards sharing intelligible contexts in a context-aware application (2012), Unpublished

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