Mental Models of Data Privacy and Security Extracted from Interviews with Indians

The Indian software and services market continues to gain momentum, with offshore outsourcing from the US, Europe and other countries becoming mainstream. As jobs that involve processing of personal data are increasingly outsourced to India, concerns are being raised about the protection of this data. While a large number of studies has been conducted in order to assess people’s attitudes about data privacy and security in the US, Australia, Canada and Europe, little information is available on this topic in India. The research we present seeks to gain an empiric and exploratory understanding of Indians’ attitudes about data privacy and security. We study these attitudes by analyzing the mental models that are reflected in interviews which we conducted among Indians. We will report on a methodology for extracting, analyzing and comparing mental models from texts and on the knowledge we gained about the perception of data privacy and security among the subjects.