Designing a Mobile Application to Support Social Processes for Privacy Decisions

– People often rely on their friends, family, and other loved ones to help them make decisions about digital privacy and security. However, these social processes are rarely supported by technology. To address this gap, we developed an Android-based mobile application (“app”) prototype which helps individuals collaborate with people they know to make informed decisions about their app privacy permissions. To evaluate our design, we conducted an interview study with 10 college students while they interacted with our prototype. Overall, participants responded positively to the novel idea of using social collaboration as a means for making better privacy decisions. Yet, we also found that users are less inclined to help others and may be only willing to partake in conversations that directly affect themselves. We discuss the potential for embedding social processes in the design of systems that support privacy decision-making, as well as some of the challenges of this approach.