Nudging Users Towards Privacy on Mobile Devices

By allowing individuals to be permanently connected to the Internet, mobile devices ease the way information can be accessed and shared online, but also raise novel privacy challenges for end users. Recent behavioral research on “soft” or “asymmetric” paternalism has begun exploring ways of helping people make better decisions in different aspects of their lives. We apply that research to privacy decision making, investigating how soft paternalistic solutions (also known as nudges) may be used to counter cognitive biases and ameliorate privacy-sensitive behavior. We present the theoretical background of our research, and highlight current industry solutions and research endeavors that could be classified as nudging interventions. We then describe our ongoing work on embedding soft paternalistic mechanisms in location sharing technologies and Twitter privacy agents.