Security & Privacy Support for Teenagers in Online Social Media

安全

• 批准号: RGPIN-2014-03862
• 负责人: Beznosov, Konstantin
• 金额: $ 2.33万
• 依托单位: University of British Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=610693
• 关键词: Security; Privacy; Support; Teenagers; Online

As of October 2013, Facebook had more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, which is more people than most nations in the world. It is not surprising that the use of online social networks and other online social media (collectively referred to as OSM) has been taken up by a wide range of individuals and organizations. With so many different stakeholders, the issue of security and privacy for users of OSM has become an important, intriguing, and controversial subject. Whether they realize it or not, OSM users face numerous security and privacy threats. The insecure and unsafe use of OSM is a challenging and critical problem that has been attracting the attention of both practitioners and researchers. The problem is challenging because individual users are generally not properly trained and lack the necessary expertise. Some of them are simply too young; Facebook allows children as young as 13 years of age to join. Individual users also consider security to be a secondary task, have inadequate mental models of the security and privacy mechanisms they have to control and the risks they face, and have a tendency to also underestimate these risks. As a result, OSM users are not sufficiently equipped to protect themselves. Teenagers constitute about 7% of Facebook users (about 100 million users), and are collectively one of the most vulnerable user groups on OSM. The proposed research will focus on investigating the socio-technical means of protecting teenage users against threats raised by the use of OSM. I will be investigating both the mechanisms and their interfaces for supporting both the privacy and security needs of this user group. I will specifically focus on supporting teenagers of school age (i.e., 13-18 years old), as due to their lack of technical experience, personal maturity, and education on issues of privacy they are one of the most vulnerable user groups. To provide technological support to a specific user group, one first has to understand the motivations, needs and requirements of that user population. As such, I will first start with qualitative user studies to develop an understanding of the factors that drive teenagers to use OSMs and other social media sites, as well as the specific risks they face, and concerns they might have due to their OSM activities. My graduate students and I will conduct interviews with high school students. Focus groups will be also considered, although they might be less appropriate than individual interviews due to the sensitive nature of personal privacy when it comes to social media. The hypothesis and models developed from the literature review and interviews will be tested through surveys, questionnaires, laboratory experiments and other quantitative instruments. These steps will ground the technological investigation in models of teenagers' motivations and behaviour that are based on empirical data. The first aspect of security and privacy in the teens’ experience with using OSM that I will investigate is their acceptance of friendship requests from strangers. As we showed previously, Facebook users tend to accept friendship requests from the profiles of users they have never met before, with acceptance rates upwards of 80%. The risks of accepting such requests vary and may include privacy breaches, misinformation and surveillance. Once I gain an understanding of this population of OSM users, I will proceed towards an investigation of the kind of technology support that can be used to manage the security and privacy aspects of teenagers' experience with OSM. The mechanisms and user interfaces that my graduate students and I develop will be evaluated through laboratory studies, focus groups, and limited field studies of prototypes provided to study participants.

截至2013年10月，Facebook拥有超过15亿的月活跃用户，比世界上大多数国家都多。使用在线社交网络和其他在线社交媒体（统称为OSM）已被广泛的个人和组织所采用，这并不奇怪。有这么多不同的利益相关者，OSM用户的安全和隐私问题已经成为一个重要的、有趣的和有争议的话题。无论他们是否意识到，OSM用户都面临着许多安全和隐私威胁。 OSM的不安全和不安全使用是一个具有挑战性和关键性的问题，一直吸引着从业人员和研究人员的关注。这个问题具有挑战性，因为个人用户通常没有得到适当的培训，缺乏必要的专门知识。其中一些人太年轻了; Facebook允许13岁的儿童加入。个人用户也认为安全是次要任务，他们必须控制的安全和隐私机制以及他们面临的风险的心理模型不足，并且倾向于低估这些风险。因此，OSM用户没有足够的能力保护自己。青少年约占Facebook用户的7%（约1亿用户），是OSM上最脆弱的用户群体之一。 拟议的研究将侧重于调查保护青少年用户免受使用OSM带来的威胁的社会技术手段。我将研究支持该用户组的隐私和安全需求的机制及其接口。我将特别侧重于支持学龄青少年（即，13-18岁），因为他们缺乏技术经验、个人成熟度和隐私问题方面的教育，他们是最脆弱的用户群体之一。 为了向特定用户群体提供技术支助，首先必须了解该用户群体的动机、需要和要求。因此，我将首先从定性用户研究开始，以了解驱使青少年使用OSM和其他社交媒体网站的因素，以及他们面临的具体风险，以及他们可能因OSM活动而产生的担忧。我和我的研究生将对高中生进行采访。焦点小组也将被考虑，尽管它们可能不如个人访谈合适，因为在社交媒体方面个人隐私的敏感性。通过调查、问卷、实验室实验和其他定量工具，对文献综述和访谈中提出的假设和模型进行了检验。这些步骤将使基于经验数据的青少年动机和行为模式成为技术调查的基础。 我将调查的青少年使用OSM的安全和隐私的第一个方面是他们接受陌生人的友谊请求。正如我们之前所展示的，Facebook用户倾向于接受从未见过的用户的友谊请求，接受率超过80%。接受此类请求的风险各不相同，可能包括隐私泄露、错误信息和监视。一旦我了解了OSM用户的这一群体，我将着手调查可用于管理青少年OSM体验的安全和隐私方面的技术支持。我和我的研究生开发的机制和用户界面将通过实验室研究，焦点小组和提供给研究参与者的原型的有限实地研究进行评估。