The privacy protection effectiveness of the video conference platforms' virtual background and the privacy concerns from the end-users

TL;DR

This paper investigates how virtual backgrounds in video conferencing platforms affect user privacy and mental well-being, highlighting potential privacy leaks and proposing design improvements based on user surveys and interviews.

Contribution

It explores the privacy implications of virtual backgrounds and offers design suggestions to enhance safety and stability, based on empirical user research.

Findings

Virtual backgrounds can leak user privacy due to instability.

User privacy concerns influence mental health and behavior.

Design improvements can mitigate privacy risks.

Abstract

Due to the abrupt arise of pandemic worldwide, the video conferencing platforms are becoming ubiquitously available and being embedded into either various digital devices or the collaborative daily work. Even though the service provider has designed many security functions to protect individual's privacy, such as virtual background (VB), it still remains to be explored that how the instability of VB leaks users' privacy or impacts their mentality and behaviours. In order to understand and locate implications for the contextual of the end-users' privacy awareness and its mental model, we will conduct survey and interviews for users as the first stage research. We will raise conceptual challenges in terms of the designing safety and stable VB, as well as provide design suggestions.