Improving Privacy on Social Network Sites

July 6, 2010
Heather Richter Lipford | University of North Carolina

The proliferation of personal information being posted online has led to well publicized privacy issues. On one hand, users seem oblivious to their privacy, doing little to protect their personal data. On the other hand, there have been a number of privacy uproars and media coverage of new site features and problems. In this talk, I will present the results of several projects aimed at understanding and addressing the privacy needs of users on social network sites. Our research demonstrates that users do have privacy concerns and problems, and could benefit from greater awareness and control over the sharing of their information. We have designed several new mechanisms and interfaces to address these problems, aimed at maintaining the social benefits of information sharing while reducing the risks of participating on social network sites.

Speaker Details

Dr. Heather Richter Lipford is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Software and Information Systems at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She completed her Ph.D. in 2005 from the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, usable security and privacy, visual analytics, and ubiquitous computing. She is co-directing the HCI Lab at UNC Charlotte and is a member of the UNCC Cyber Defense and Network Assurance Center and Charlotte Visualization Center.