Friend Inspector: A Serious Game to Enhance Privacy Awareness in Social Networks

TL;DR

Friend Inspector is a serious game designed to improve users' privacy awareness on Facebook by providing an engaging way to understand privacy settings, addressing a key gap in privacy education for social network users.

Contribution

This paper introduces Friend Inspector, a novel serious game aimed at increasing privacy awareness among social network users, highlighting the importance of awareness before privacy control.

Findings

Attracted significant user engagement since launch

Demonstrates the need for educational tools in privacy management

Highlights privacy awareness as a prerequisite for effective privacy control

Abstract

Currently, many users of Social Network Sites are insufficiently aware of who can see their shared personal items. Nonetheless, most approaches focus on enhancing privacy in Social Networks through improved privacy settings, neglecting the fact that privacy awareness is a prerequisite for privacy control. Social Network users first need to know about privacy issues before being able to make adjustments. In this paper, we introduce Friend Inspector, a serious game that allows its users to playfully increase their privacy awareness on Facebook. Since its launch, Friend Inspector has attracted a significant number of visitors, emphasising the need for better tools to understand privacy settings on Social Networks.