Public vs. Publicized: Content Use Trends and Privacy Expectations
Venue
6th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security (HotSec '11), USENIX (2011)
Publication Year
2011
Authors
Jessica Staddon, Andrew Swerdlow
BibTeX
Abstract
From a semantic standpoint, there is a clear differentia- tion between the meanings
of public and publicized con- tent. The former includes any content that is
accessible by anyone, while the latter emphasizes visibility – publi- cized content
is actively made available. As a user’s on- line experience becomes more
personalized and data is increasingly pushed rather than pulled, the line between
public and publicized content is inevitably blurred. In this position paper, we
present quantitative evidence that despite this trend, in some settings users do
not antici- pate the use of public content beyond the narrow context in which is
was disclosed; they do not anticipate that the content may be publicized. While
providing a “publicized” option for data is an important counterpart to the ability
to limit access to data (e.g. through access con- trol lists), such an option must
be accompanied by both greater user awareness of the ramifications of such an
option and by transparency into data usage.
