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

  • Authors:

  • Lukasz Jedrzejczyk;Blaine A. Price;Arosha K. Bandara;Bashar Nuseibeh

  • Affiliations:

  • The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK;The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK;The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK;The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK and Lero, University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

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 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 high-level design criteria for incorporating real-time feedback into information sharing applications in a manner that ensures social acceptance of the technology.