CAISS were privileged to have Professor Wendy Moncur from the University of Strathclyde deliver our second talk in October.
Wendy leads the Cybersecurity Group and her research focuses on online identity, reputation, trust and cybersecurity and crosses many disciplinary boundaries. Her current research – the 3.6million AP4L project – develops privacy enhancing technologies (PET’s) to support people going through sensitive life transitions. The research is looking at four transition groups: (i) living with cancer, (ii) leaving the armed forces, (iii) LGBT+ and (iv) relationship breakdowns.
Wendy talked to us about “Navigating bias in online privacy research”. She stressed that it is important that we ask the right questions and whilst doing this we also ask the right people. As researchers what do we ourselves “bring” to the research as we use our own “interpretive lens” and it is important that we communicate our findings clearly so that others can understand the results.
Wendy then went on to discuss our individual online identities, this is co-constructed, made up of data about an individual posted by themselves and by other people and organisations. The internet in general is swimming in personal data, the minute we share anything we have lost control – once it is “out there” this information persists. Her explanation of how threads of personal data can be used to construct information regarding an individual was very thought provoking; e.g. if you share your Strava run data then someone can easily ascertain your home address or where you work if you run in your lunch break!
To mitigate against bias in the research Wendy advocated the following:
- Allow for self reflection
- Draw out information on digital privacy in sensitive contexts
- Foster participants’ ability for self-expression
- Facilitate richer, more comprehensive stories and descriptions
- Enable non-experts to be heard
- Avoid assumptions and bias.
To further reduce the researcher bias and ensure that the vocabulary was robust the research team worked hard to increase the list of descriptive terms they used, checked out further terms with the University Librarian and also with the advisory board of people living with the transitions under investigation. This led to a very big list! For the workshops that ensued participants were asked to map their life transition on line with questions as prompts. Then empathy mapping was used to help further remove bias and deliver a shared understanding of the user across the research team. Next metaphor cards were used with the groups asked to consider potential technological solutions as opposed to just challenges, needs and practices. Finally participants ideas were prioritised using the MoSCoW tool (Must have, Should have, Could have, Will not have).
Sociodemographic groups were discussed in that older people 70 plus tend to read but don’t comment on line, 30 to 60 year olds have a lot to say and younger people are happy to share information but in general have a more robust awareness of online security.
Results have indicated that the “Transition Continuum” is not a straight line and this is being explored further. Useful design insight for developing Privacy Enhancing Tools is that people’s experiences are not necessarily linear or instantaneous and can extend over a long period. For the future privacy settings ideally need to be more like a dial than a switch.
