סמינר המחלקה להנדסת תעשייה

~ Modelling Responses to Privacy-Related Indications
Yefim Shulman is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Tel Aviv University
The lecture will beheldon
Tuesday, May 25, 2021, at 14:00 Via Zoom
~~https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83135087692?pwd=NEJydGJuNVdaQlVEMjdYOERIaWVQUT09

Abstract:
Users’ interactions with online systems (e.g., e-shopping, messaging, creating digital artwork) may result in intended and
unintended disclosure of their or other’s personal information, thereby affecting their privacy and image. Users are
largely un-, or even misinformed about the consequences of their actions. As a result, user control over their privacy is
limited. We argue that user control requires relevant and timely feedback. Hence the study of online privacy control
should deal with the effects of properties of such feedback, taking into account the users’ individual characteristics.
To address this issue systematically, we put forward a conceptual control-theoretic model, describing a user’s control
over a process that entails privacy- and image-related outcomes. The model focuses on decision-making regarding
personal information disclosure as a function of the disclosed information, the context in which the information is
disclosed, the users’ individual characteristics, the indications from the system (notifications), communicating the
possible privacy implications of user actions, and available user controls. The indications are a means of feedback. We
focus on select indication properties, such as notification timing, content, and layout. We account for two categories of
the users’ individual characteristics: privacy-related attitudes (such as privacy risk beliefs, perceptions of control,
information privacy concerns, self-presentation attitudes, and intentions towards behavior) and cognitive factors (such as
individual differences in information processing and momentary affective states). In a series of online experiments, we
investigated the effects of these factors on users’ decisions regarding the disclosure and sharing of personal information.
The results show the prominent role of an interplay between the interaction context, indication properties, information
sensitivity, and individual characteristics. The results improve our understanding of how to inform users’ privacy-related
decisions, bear implications for notification design and information requests, and emphasize the need for further
research.

Bio:
Yefim Shulman is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Tel Aviv University. Yefim has been doing
his Ph.D. as an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) in the “Privacy & Us” Marie Skłodowska Curie Initial Training Network (ITN),
funded within the EC Horizon 2020 framework. Yefims’s work, supervised by Prof. Joachim Meyer, focuses on how to
inform user decision-making regarding actions that are consequential for their online privacy and self-presentation. Yefim
holds a Master’s degree in Business Informatics from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow, 2014), previously having
graduated with a Specialist’s (Crisis Management, 2012) and Bachelor’s (Economics, 2011) degrees from Volgograd State
Technical University.