Instant Messaging and Privacy

1
Instant Messaging and Privacy

• Sameer Patil
• University of California, Irvine
• ( IBM T. J. Watson Research Center)
• Alfred Kobsa
• University of California, Irvine

2
Motivation

• For effective and efficient collaboration and
  coordination across distance, individuals need as
  much information as possible about the activities
  of other team members.
• This need for awareness of other team members
  may, however, be in conflict with team members
  individual desires of privacy.

PRIVACY
AWARENESS
3
Motivation

• Understanding current practices and expectations
  may help build more privacy-sensitive frameworks
  for capturing, maintaining, providing and seeking
  awareness information.
• Such systems will empower users to seamlessly
  (and continually) find the right balance between
  privacy and awareness using socio-technical means.

4
Research Questions

• Balancing Awareness and Privacy
• Is it a problem?
• How is it handled today?
• Can technology help?
• We have used Instant Messaging (IM) as a starting
  point for exploring these issues.

5
Importance of IM Privacy

• IM is being increasingly used in collaboration
• But indications of privacy concerns in several
  studies
• Grinter and Palen (2002) Instant Messaging in
  Teen Life
• Begole et. al. (2002) Work Rhythms Analyzing
  Visualizations of Awareness Histories of
  Distributed Groups
• Different responses
• Organizational policies still in the evolution
  stage
• Privacy policies in IM systems different in
  every system
• Privacy settings in IM systems different for
  every system
• Personal strategies?? Unclear, vary widely?

6
Semi-structured Interviews

• 7 Diverse Subjects
• Software Developer
• Graphic Designer
• Software Engineer
• Doctoral Student
• Technical Support Staff
• Engineer
• Undergraduate Student
• 1 1/2 hour interviews
• Recorded and transcribed

• 5 Males, 2 Females
• Mid 20s Early 30s
• Except undergraduate (20), and Engineer (gt 55)
• 4 interviews conducted at location where IM is
  used the most
• No compensation

7
Findings

• Three common concerns
• Privacy from non-contacts
• desire for very high degree of privacy from
  people not on contact lists
• Privacy regarding availability
• privacy from interruption or distraction from the
  current task
• Privacy regarding content
• desire to prevent contents of IM communication
  from being available to unintended third parties

8
Privacy from Non-contacts

• Non-contacts
• Strangers with unknown intentions
• Contacts
• Trusted Acquaintances
• Lowered Privacy Barrier
• No public profile (exception undergraduate)
• Users are careful about who is added

9
Privacy Regarding Availability

• Privacy from interruption or distraction
• Different expectations when working as opposed to
  not working
• Plausible deniability Nardi et. al. (2000)
• Home extends into work
• but rarely vice versa!
• Different levels of availability for different
  groups of people based on location and (work)
  context

10
Privacy Regarding Content

• Expectations similar to email
• for monitoring, sniffing, saving or sharing
• Informal policies for sharing
• Unease at the possibility of the other party
  saving conversation
• Switch in medium for sensitive conversations
• phone or face-to-face
• Concern for others watching screen contents
• minimize windows
• turn off monitor
• physical rearrangement (if possible)

11
Managing Impression

• An important driving force behind peoples
  privacy in the context of IM seems to be the
  desire to control how they appear to others.
• Available to different extent to different groups
• Desire to control saving/sharing of conversations
• Desired impression dependent on relationship
• friend, family, peer, superior, stranger etc.
• Practices influenced by
• defaults, personal preferences, prior knowledge
  experiences, group norms, organizational
  policies, cultural expectations

12
Managing Impression

• The desire to manage ones impression is likely
  to strongly influence the point of balance
  between demands for privacy and the consent to
  disclose awareness information.
• Privacy-sensitive collaboration system should
  empower users to seamlessly manage their
  impression as seen by various parties involved.

13
Implications for Design

• Defaults
• Provide defaults that are widely applicable
  across persons and situations. These could
  include typical profiles (e.g., manager,
  student, secretary) with appropriate
  settings.
• Modifiable policies
• Allow for user modifiability of default privacy
  policies, so that users can cater to the current
  context.
• Visibility
• Give users the opportunity to inspect various
  pieces of information about themselves that can
  be viewed by others.
• Interaction
• Design the interaction with users in such a way
  that specifying or modifying status, settings or
  policies requires little or no time and effort.

14
Acknowledgments

• Heather Pulliam
• Gloria Mark
• Bonnie Nardi
• Cleidson de Souza

• Becky Grinter
• Paul Dourish
• Max Teltzrow
• Keri Carpenter

15
Questions