Anonymous or not? Understanding the Factors Affecting Personal Mobile Data Disclosure

TL;DR

This study investigates how demographic, social, and mobility factors influence users' decisions to disclose personal mobile data, highlighting the significance of social interactions and individual traits in sharing behavior.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the factors affecting mobile data disclosure, including social interactions and personal characteristics, based on a field study with real users.

Findings

Social interactions significantly influence sharing willingness.

Individual traits help predict data sharing behavior.

Mobility patterns impact disclosure decisions.

Abstract

The wide adoption of mobile devices and social media platforms have dramatically increased the collection and sharing of personal information. More and more frequently, users are called to take decisions concerning the disclosure of their personal information. In this study, we investigate the factors affecting users' choices toward the disclosure of their personal data, including not only their demographic and self-reported individual characteristics, but also their social interactions and their mobility patterns inferred from months of mobile phone data activity. We report the findings of a field-study conducted with a community of 63 subjects provided with (i) a smart-phone and (ii) a Personal Data Store (PDS) enabling them to control the disclosure of their data. We monitor the sharing behavior of our participants through the PDS, and evaluate the contribution of different factors affecting their disclosing choices of location and social interaction data. Our analysis shows that social interaction inferred by mobile phones is an important factor revealing willingness to share, regardless of the data type. In addition, we provide further insights on the individual traits relevant to the prediction of sharing behavior.