HCI Issues in Privacy

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HCI Issues in Privacy
Mark Ackerman Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science and School of
Information University of Michigan
DIMACS July, 2004
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Overview of talk

1. HCI
2. What is privacy?
3. The privacy problem
4. Why is privacy hard?

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HCI

• Human-Computer Interaction
• User control aka User-centered
• Not just about user interfaces
• Cognitive versus micro-sociology
• Broad view of HCI
• Combined social and technical co-design space
• Empirically driven (both as science and
  development process)

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Privacy

• What is privacy
• Differing but connected senses in social
  psychology, micro-sociology, policy literatures
• Solitude
• Regulation of social interaction (Altman)
• A private (versus public) space or activity
• Avoiding unwanted personal disclosure or noise
• Freedom from surveillence
• Control over release and dissemination of
  personal data
• Control over ones persona (Goffman)

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Privacy

• What is privacy
• Control over ones personal data
• Control over release and dissemination
• Overlapping with security but different
• Inherently a tension between person and others
• Thought to be critical element in using a
  commercial Web site, adoption of ubicomp

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The Privacy Problem

• Privacy is important
• Growing problem for users
• Consumers see privacy as a big problem
• 41 of sampled US consumers very concerned about
  their privacy Harris Poll, 2000
• 92 of respondents indicated that even when
  companies promised to keep personal data private,
  they would not actually do so Light 2001
• 57 of sampled US consumers want better legal
  protection Harris Poll, 2000

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The Privacy Problem

• But privacy is not a monolithic problem
• Differing attitudes in different cultures

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The Privacy Problem

• But privacy is not a monolithic problem
• Differing types of privacy concerns (Culnan and
  Armstrong 1999)
• Unauthorized access
• Risk of secondary use
• Reuse of personal data for unrelated purposes
  without consent
• Sharing with third-parties
• Creation of profiles

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The Privacy Problem

• But privacy is not a monolithic problem
• Attitudes are hardly monolithic
• 3 basic groups in US (Ackerman, Cranor, Reagle
  1999, based on Westin 1991)
• Marginally concerned (27)
• Privacy fundamentalists (17)
• Privacy pragmatics (56)
• Spiekermann et al. found similar in Germany
• Based on what people both said they would do in
  an activity and their actual activity

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The Privacy Problem

• But privacy is not a monolithic problem
• Large gap between most people's stated
  preferences and their actual behavior
• But most people want a feeling of control
• For example, no automatic transfer of data (86
  of sample in Ackerman, Cranor and Reagle 1999)

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Why is privacy a hard problem for HCI?

• Social theoretic background
• Goffman (1961)
• Release of personal info is highly nuanced
• Presentation of face is critically important to
  people
• An everyday activity
• Garfinkel (1967)
• People expect to be able to make sense of their
  environments and their activities

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Why is privacy a hard problem for HCI?

• Social activity is fluid and nuanced
• Details of interaction matter (Garfinkel 1967,
  Strauss 1993)
• People handle this detail with agility (Suchman
  1987)
• What people pay attention differs according to
  the situation (situated activity, Suchman 1987)

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Why is privacy a hard problem for HCI?

• HCI problem (also CSCW problem)
• Information space is horrendous
• At least nine dimensions of analysis (e.g., what,
  who, intended use, duration of use)
• And
• Critically important to people
• Highly nuanced
• An everyday activity
• Social-technical gap (Ackerman 2001)
• We know what we need to do, but we dont know how
  to do it.

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Why is privacy a hard problem for HCI?

• Ubicomp makes user control even harder
• An individual will operate within many social and
  organizational contexts, and surrounding social
  and organizational environments may make use of
  many individuals' data.
• A pervasive software environment, consisting of
  many systems, may be in a complex relation to
  the user.

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More info?

• Mark Ackerman
• ackerm_at_umich.edu
• http//www.eecs.umich.edu/ackerman

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Privacy Critics

• Privacy critics (Ackerman and Cranor 1996)

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Privacy Critics