Human-centred Privacy and Security

Managing security and privacy in our hyper-connected world is increasingly difficult. Our research aims to help people manage their privacy and security online. We use both HCI and AI methods for this. We apply HCI methods to study users’ perceptions, mental models, and preferences regarding security and privacy. We also apply AI models and technologies to support users when managing their security and privacy online, for instance, by learning what their privacy preferences are and automatically applying them online.

We have applied our human-centred privacy and security research across different domains and systems, from the web, to social media, to the cloud to the smart home. We have also focused, using a similar approach, on the problem of Multiuser Privacy.

Related Projects

• Context and Personality in Privacy Choices (Google) - link
• Resolving Multiparty Privacy Conflicts - RePriCo
• The Economics of Assurance Activities - link

Selected Publications

• William Seymour, Noura Abdi, Kopo Ramokapane, Jide Edu, Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, and Jose Such. Voice Application Developer Experiences with Alexa and Google Assistant: Juggling Risks, Liability, and Security. In USENIX Security Symposium (SEC), pp. In press. 18 pages, 2024.       
• William Seymour, Mark Coté, and Jose Such. Legal Obligation and Ethical Best Practice: Towards Meaningful Verbal Consent for Voice Assistants. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), pp. 166:1–166:16, 2023.       
• Eman Alhelali, Kopo Ramokapane, and Jose Such. Multiuser Privacy and Security Conflicts in the Cloud. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), pp. 205:1–205:16, 2023.       
• Kopo M Ramokapane, Gaurav Misra, Jose Such, and Sören Preibusch. Truth or Dare: Understanding and Predicting How Users Lie and Provide Untruthful Data Online. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2021.       
• Noura Abdi, Xiao Zhan, Kopo Ramokapane, and Jose Such. Privacy Norms for Smart Home Personal Assistants. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2021.        
• Jose Such, J Porter, S Preibusch, and A Joinson. Photo Privacy Conflicts in Social Media: A Large-scale Empirical Study. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), pp. 3821–3832, 2017.       
• K Ramokapane, A Rashid, and Jose Such. “I feel stupid I can’t delete...”: A Study of Users' Cloud Deletion Practices and Coping Strategies. In Usenix Thirteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), pp. 241–256, 2017.       
• Ricard Fogues, Jose Such, Agustin Espinosa Minguet, and Ana Garcia-Fornes. Open Challenges in Relationship-Based Privacy Mechanisms for Social Network Services. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact., 31(5):350–370, 2015.       

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