On the impact of real-time feedback on users' behaviour in mobile location-sharing applications

Lukasz Jedrzejczyk, Blaine A. Price, Arosha K. Bandara, Bashar Nuseibeh
2010 Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security - SOUPS '10  
Effective privacy management requires that mobile systems" users be able to make informed privacy decisions as their experience and knowledge of a system progresses. Prior work has shown that making such privacy decisions is a difficult task for users because systems do not provide support for awareness, visibility and accountability when sharing privacy-sensitive information. This paper reports results of our investigation into the efficacy of realtime feedback as a mechanism for incorporating
more » ... these features of social translucence in location-sharing applications, in order to help users make better privacy decisions. We explored the role of real-time feedback in the context of Buddy Tracker, a mobile location-sharing application. Our work focuses on ways in which real-time feedback affects people"s behaviour in order to identify the main criteria for acceptance of this technology. Based on the data from a three week field trial of Buddy Tracker, a focus group session, and interviews, we found that when using a system that provided real-time feedback, people were more accountable for their actions and reduced the number of unreasonable location requests. We have used the results of our study to propose highlevel design criteria for incorporating real-time feedback into information sharing applications in a manner that ensures social acceptance of the technology. We explore the role of real-time feedback in privacy management in the context of Buddy Tracker, a mobile location-sharing service we developed, by asking the following questions:
doi:10.1145/1837110.1837129 dblp:conf/soups/JedrzejczykPBN10 fatcat:hl2scqolbrgencj2znow3utamu