Privacy, anonymity, and perceived risk in open collaboration: A study of tor users and wikipedians

Andrea Forte, Nazanin Andalibi, Rachel Greenstadt

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

    Abstract

    This qualitative study examines privacy practices and concerns among contributors to open collaboration projects. We collected interview data from people who use the anonymity network Tor who also contribute to online projects and from Wikipedia editors who are concerned about their privacy to better understand how privacy concerns impact participation in open collaboration projects. We found that risks perceived by contributors to open collaboration projects include threats of surveillance, violence, harassment, opportunity loss, reputation loss, and fear for loved ones. We explain participants' operational and technical strategies for mitigating these risks and how these strategies affect their contributions. Finally, we discuss chilling effects associated with privacy loss, the need for open collaboration projects to go beyond attracting and educating participants to consider their privacy, and some of the social and technical approaches that could be explored to mitigate risk at a project or community level.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Title of host publicationCSCW 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
    PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
    Pages1800-1811
    Number of pages12
    ISBN (Electronic)9781450343350
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Feb 25 2017
    Event2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2017 - Portland, United States
    Duration: Feb 25 2017Mar 1 2017

    Publication series

    NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW

    Other

    Other2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2017
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CityPortland
    Period2/25/173/1/17

    Keywords

    • Identity
    • Privacy
    • Risk
    • Tor
    • Wikipedia

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Software
    • Computer Networks and Communications
    • Human-Computer Interaction

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