Avoid a privacy nightmare with 'Lean Privacy Review'

When Google launched its ain effort astatine a societal network—Google Buzz—back successful 2010, the institution initially suffered a PR nightmare. "WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw," work Business Insider. It turned out, Google was generating idiosyncratic connections by collecting interaction info from users' Gmail accounts. In different words, anyone connected the societal web could spot who anyone else's idiosyncratic contacts were.

To effort to debar privacy nightmares similar that one, companies sometimes execute privateness reviews connected caller applications oregon services to effort to drawback immoderate imaginable privateness issues earlier they're released. These reviews typically impact privacy experts and lawyers and thin to outgo rather a spot of wealth and time, making them not precise feasible for galore companies. They besides seldom impact existent idiosyncratic feedback.

But a caller survey by Carnegie Mellon University CyLab researchers proposes a caller benignant of privateness review—one that is cheaper and makes it casual to perceive nonstop idiosyncratic feedback aboriginal successful the improvement process. The study, "Lean Privacy Review: Collecting Users' Privacy Concerns of Data Practices astatine a Low Cost," was published successful the existent contented of ACM Transactions connected Computer-Human Interaction.

"Lean Privacy Review tin assistance uncover privateness concerns existent radical tin person astatine a tiny fraction of the outgo and wait-time for a ceremonial review," says Haojian Jin, a Ph.D. pupil successful the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and the study's pb author.

The authors accidental that a Lean Privacy Review—or LPR for short—isn't meant to regenerate the ceremonial privateness review—privacy experts and lawyers are inactive necessary—but alternatively to supplement the ceremonial reappraisal to marque the full process easier and smoother. They accidental that LPR is particularly utile successful the precise aboriginal stages of design.

"If you tin find these problems overmuch earlier on, and cheaper, it's really bully for everybody," says CyLab's Jason Hong, a prof successful the HCII and a co-author of the study. "The velocity and debased outgo of LPR increases its flexibility and allows it to beryllium utilized much often and passim the full plan process alternatively than conscionable a one-time ceremonial privateness review."

LPR begins erstwhile a practitioner wants to recognize users' privateness concerns of utilizing a definite benignant of information for a circumstantial purpose. They'll make a privateness storyboard utilizing the LPR website to pass 1 oregon immoderate of the 4 main actions performed connected that data: information collection, sharing, processing, and usage. Using the storyboard, the website volition past make a survey for users, successful which they picture the information action, and past inquire however they consciousness astir the action, and wherefore successful plain English. The practitioner whitethorn administer the survey done immoderate fig of survey channels, e.g. assemblage workers connected Amazon Mechanical Turk oregon Google Marketing Platform.

After the survey has been conducted, a web interface aggregates each of the privateness concerns identified by users into a bid of graphics.

"Through these visualizations, practitioners tin person some a quantitative and qualitative presumption of imaginable privateness concerns, namely, however severely the concerns are and what the concerns are," says Jin.

The researchers evaluated LPR utilizing 12 real-world information signifier scenarios—including the Google Buzz scenario—with 240 assemblage users and 24 information practitioners. They recovered that it lone takes ~ 14 participants to find the immense bulk of the privacy concerns and costs little than 4 hours of full assemblage enactment for a fixed scenario. That's equivalent to astir $80.

"Our results amusement that LPR is inexpensive, fast, consistent, and tin supply high-quality privateness reappraisal results," the authors constitute successful the study.

It's hard to cognize for definite what benignant of privateness review, if any, Google had performed earlier launching Google Buzz (the institution did code the issues comparatively rapidly aft the nationalist uproar), but it's imaginable they could person dodged their privateness nightmare if they'd had LPR.

For those interested, LPR has a website wherever 1 tin research the method and make storyboards.

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More information: Haojian Jin et al, Lean Privacy Review: Collecting Users' Privacy Concerns of Data Practices astatine a Low Cost, ACM Transactions connected Computer-Human Interaction (2021). DOI: 10.1145/3463910