Towards Equitable Privacy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a participatory research approach called community studybeds aimed at understanding and addressing privacy challenges faced by marginalized and vulnerable populations in digital services.

Contribution

It presents a novel participatory method for engaging MVPs in privacy research, focusing on inclusive security practices and initial reflections from the project.

Findings

Community studybeds facilitate MVP engagement in privacy research.

Initial insights highlight specific privacy concerns of MVPs.

The approach supports designing more inclusive privacy-preserving applications.

Abstract

Ensuring equitable privacy experiences remains a challenge, especially for marginalised and vulnerable populations (MVPs) who often hesitate to participate or use digital services due to concerns about the privacy of their sensitive information. In response, security research has emphasised the importance of inclusive security and privacy practices to facilitate meaningful engagement of MVPs online. However, research in this area is still in its early stages, with other MVPs yet to be considered (such as low-income groups, and refugees), novel engagement methods yet to be explored, and limited support for software developers in building applications and services for MVPs. In 2022, we initiated a UK Research Council funded Equitable Privacy project to address these gaps. Our goal is to prioritise the privacy needs and requirements of MVPs in the design and development of software applications and services. We design and implement a new participatory research approach -- community studybeds -- in collaboration with third-sector organisations that support MVPs to identify and tackle the challenges these groups encounter. In this paper, we share the initial reflections and experiences of the Equitable Privacy project, particularly emphasising the utilisation of our community studybeds.