Doctoral Dissertation Research: Geoprivacy Attitudes and Personal Location-Masking Strategies of Internet Users

这个博士论文研究项目将调查公众对地理隐私的态度，以及互联网用户在从事在线活动时为了保护隐私而试图模糊或掩盖他们的个人位置的程度。该项目将提供有关个人在请求位置时采用的策略以防止其个人身份被识别的新知识，并将为响应位置请求时的隐私态度和行为之间的关系提供新的见解。虽然许多关于地理隐私的工作都集中在研究人员保护人类受试者匿名性的策略上，但这个项目将强调个人在管理自己的位置档案方面所起的作用。该项目将增强对与隐藏位置倾向相关的因素的基本理解，这将通过为误差计算提供更可靠的基础，为未来假设自我报告位置为事实的研究提供信息。更好地了解谁在网上隐藏他们的数据以及他们为什么这样做，将有助于应用程序开发人员更好地了解如何为这些个人服务。结果将广泛传播给广泛的潜在受益者，包括寻求保护数字隐私的非营利组织和国家地理空间咨询委员会（National Geospatial Advisory Committee）等政府组织。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。地理隐私指的是个人控制何时以及如何共享其个人位置数据的权利。在越来越普遍的位置数据收集中，公众对这种控制的尝试在很大程度上仍未得到探索。主持这个项目的博士生将研究成年人在网上掩盖他们的位置数据的方式，以及地理隐私知识和态度如何影响这种位置掩盖行为。她将对加利福尼亚州的成年人进行在线调查，使用概率样本和邮件联系方法来提高回复率，并使用在线征求的开放样本。她将用逻辑回归分析调查中提供的分辨率和位置真实性的相关性。学生将考虑的干预变量包括以前的隐私侵犯、黑客攻击或身份盗窃经历以及数据行业经验。她还将测试高水平和低水平位置掩蔽活动的空间集群。

This doctoral dissertation research project will examine public attitudes towards geoprivacy and the extent to which Internet users attempt to obscure or mask their personal locations in order to protect privacy when they engage in online activity. The project will provide new knowledge about the strategies individuals employ to prevent their personal identifiability when location is requested, and it will provide new insights into the relationships between privacy attitudes and behavior in responding to location requests. While much work on geoprivacy focuses on strategies for researchers to protect the anonymity of human subjects, this project will emphasize the role individuals play in managing their own location profiles. This project will enhance basic understanding of the factors associated with the propensity to mask location, which will inform future research that assumes self-reported location to be factual by providing a sounder basis for error calculation. Improved knowledge about who is masking their data online and why they are doing so will help application developers better understand how to serve those individuals. Results will be disseminated broadly to a wide range of potential beneficiaries, including non-profit groups that seek to protect digital privacy and governmental organizations like the National Geospatial Advisory Committee. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.Geoprivacy refers to the right of individuals to control when and how their personal location data are shared. Amid increasingly pervasive locational data collection, attempts by the public to exercise this control largely remain unexplored. This doctoral student conducting this project will examine the ways in which adults mask their location data online as well as how geoprivacy knowledge and attitudes influence this location-masking behavior. She will conduct an online survey of adults in California using a probability sample with a mail contact method to enhance response rate and an open sample with an online solicitation. She will analyze the correlates of both the resolution and factuality of location provided in the survey with logistic regression. Among intervening variables that the student will consider are previous privacy infringement, experience with hacking or identity theft, and data industry experience. She also will test for spatial clusters of higher and lower levels of location-masking activity.