Technology and the internet are increasingly involved in our personal as well as public lives, providing people with many benefits, but also creating risks to our privacy. Minority and marginalized groups especially benefit from information, community, and social engagement when they use technology. However, they are also in more danger. They are more likely to be targeted, and may have fewer resources to protect themselves. Technology may not be designed for their needs. Such groups are especially at risk when their personal lives are revealed and, in some cases, communicated to many online. They can face a variety of unusual security and privacy concerns, including the revelation of their offline identity, targeted harassment or doxing, and usability failures such as account lockout when interacting with security systems that use abnormal behavior (such as the use of pseudonyms) as heuristics for suspicion. This project will study how people who may be at risk use technology and what security and privacy dangers they experience. It has the goal to create new technology that better meets the needs of all people in our society.
This project investigates how people's personal lives can be compromised online and what computer security and privacy challenges they have. The project uses surveys and interviews, and designs systems informed by the results of those data. Contributions will include the development of guidelines for inclusive design and the generalization of those guidelines to marginalized groups, the creation of new systems responding to problems faced by these groups, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of these systems for supporting users' real world needs.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
