Helping Jonny Manage Privacy Exploring Filters as Interfaces for Privacy Preference Specification

In recent years, online interpersonal communication via social media has become an integral part of people’s personal and professional lives. Exponential growth in the adoption of mobile and wearable devices has further enriched communication by incorporating contextually relevant sensor information, such as location. At the same time, the capabilities and functionalities of these devices and systems lead to inherent tensions with people’s desires for privacy. Designers of these systems allow users to resolve this tension by specifying preferences for privacy-relevant settings. For instance, a user may be able to indicate that only a certain group of people may access his or her profile information or may be able to choose whether to allow an app to access his or her location. Privacy preference specification interfaces typical of today’s systems suffer from a number of shortcomings, thereby falling short of their objective of helping end users achieve effective privacy management. Some of the issues with these interfaces include: