Month: May 2017

Privacy or the lack of it?!

Maria Bobkova Leave a comment

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Privacy and mass surveillance are one of the biggest issues that have emerged (RIFON, N. J., LaROSE, R. and CHOI, S. M. , 2005), with the rise of densely connected digital world and specifically social media platforms gathering personal data with user’s own consent.

The balance between state surveillance for safety and personal privacy is a tricky mission to accomplish: studies show that public opinion splits into those who agree that it is ok to collect data for national security and others highly disagree. There is a strong debate going on about what is appropriate in terms of interfering with personal data environment.

Video 1. Wiretaps, data dumps and zero days: is digital privacy no longer possible?

Zero-day vulnerability is another big issue, that is why we take our testing and deployment very seriously. That said, there are always risks associated with any digital product: software engineers are humans and cannot foresee all the gaps in the code, so hackers might be successful in finding the backdoor even in the best of products.

Also, we realise that consumers attitude towards privacy on the web can be controversial, whereas Privacy fundamentalists are roughly 25% of the represented sample with the rest being deliberately neglectful or ignorant of the way their data is being used by online services (P. Kumaraguru and L. F. Cranor, 2005). Millenials (our target audience) deliberately trade off their personal data to build up their digital identity and gain some value in return. They have not as much concern about disclosing their information as with having a chance to control that disclosure with certain privacy settings.

Nevertheless, we believe that privacy in the modern age is the essential public good which has to be protected no matter how difficult and technically challenging that is.

Prevention and Transparency

There are two ways that privacy issue can be dealt with: Prevention of personal data being available to third parties and Transparency of how data is being used. As we have talked in previous posts, in terms of transparency we are determined to protect personal data under current legislation and also provide clear consent forms to our users stating in simple terms what will be done to their data (analogy with Creative Commons human-readable layer of the license agreement). We will respond to government data requests similarly to Facebook and will provide transparent statistics for any user to look up.

As for the Prevention, we will use end-to-end encryption models for the messages being transmitted through our app. We will try to overcome the issue of offline messages being reassigned with another key which gives a loophole for hacking. Our team will not pronounce it as a feature of the app like in Whatsapp case, but we will treat it as a bug which needs a fix.

By transparency and data protection policy combined with straightforward agenda, we provide the context for our users to consider and make a weighted decision regarding their personal data sharing.

References:

P. Kumaraguru and L. F. Cranor. Privacy indexes: A Survey of Westin’s Studies. Technical report, Institute for Software Research International, Carnegie Mellon University, December 2005

RIFON, N. J., LaROSE, R. and CHOI, S. M. (2005), Your Privacy Is Sealed: Effects of Web Privacy Seals on Trust and Personal Disclosures. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 39: 339–362. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6606.2005.00018.x

Graph Theory applied to the Social Network

Rachel Hamilton Leave a comment

NaviGap travel app is designed to facilitate interactions between networks of students travelling on their gap year and can be predicted and analysed using the mathematical language of graph theory in order conceptualise it in more abstract terms by representing individuals within the network as nodes and the relationship or connection between users as links (Barabasi 2002).

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ALBERT-LÁSZLÓ BARABÁSI

A number of graph theory metrics can be utilised in analysis of the social network, for example, Degree centrality which measure the number of links (connections) into/out of the node (user) which gives an indication of the users’ influence and popularity by measuring node connectedness. Those users with more connections have a higher centrality and therefore can reach more people.

Users of NaviGap as they make use of the functionality, would be grouped together by their connections which would help to facilitate strong clustering between travelling companions and/or regular information seekers and providers.

An effect observed by Kossinets & Watts (2006), found that a shared focus (i.e. a community of travellers with a shared goal/ location) gives more opportunity for the formation of strong social connections or strong ties between people which results in increased levels of social capital. This can be defined in terms of frequency of interactions between pairs of users, reciprocity of communication,  and the interaction type.  We believe that fostering strong clustering will benefit users in providing more relevant information and in building traveling companion relationships making the travel experience more rewarding and potentially safer. This may be of value to socially / geographically isolated students that wish to embark on a gap year.

 

References:

Barabasi, A. L. L. (2002). The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American journal of sociology, S95-S120.

Kossinets, G., & Watts, D. J. (2006). Empirical analysis of an evolving social network. science, 311(5757), 88-90.

How Might We Build User Trust?

amy Leave a comment

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As has been shown through many studies from psychology, sociology and through to philosophy, trust takes many forms but is mainly developed through the building of social relationships. Trust is therefore a huge factor when creating a social network related app and making sure individuals feel comfortable when using it.

In order to encourage users to download our app instead of many others, building trust through using a myriad of tools is important, without trust in an app there is no foundation and there is also no drive to download and to keep using an app. There needs to be some ‘proof’ that the app works, does it do what it says it is going to do and what others think it will do. Users need this added protection and reassurance that what they believe is good is actually good, as people are naturally interested in their own welfare.

The use of a social network platform for information searching and for finding travel companions must consider the emotion and behaviour associated with trust. Lewis and Weigert discuss trust as a social reality, a unitary social experience combining cognitive, emotional and behavioural facets. A Social network relies on relationships between people and trust is attributable to relationships with and between social groups such as friends, communities and organisations, therefore the need for trust arises from our interdependence with others, in a social network such as this users depend on others to help them obtain their outcomes. Rousseau defines trust as a “psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviors of another” users of the app have interests with other users that are intertwined, creating an element of risk, therefore trust is very valuable in a social network as it is associated with cooperation, information sharing, and problem solving; key features of NaviGap.

All factors must be taken in to consideration in building trust in a social web environment, these include policy-based trust, provenance-based trust and reputation-based trust. In terms of the social network NaviGap, a combination of approaches to trust need to be taken:

1.Policy-Based Trust – This approach provides security to users accessing services via signed/trusted certification authorities to verify credentials and access. Within NaviGap, we provide a privacy Policy which a formal legal agreement for protecting users information and data, that if broken can lead to prosecution. Secondly, we utilise security protocols such as public key encryption system and HTTPS protocol.

2.Provenance-Based Trust – NaviGap will employ a provenence based trust system in terms of allowing users to assess the trustworthiness of the content posted based on the history of its generation and propagation. This will mean users will have transaparancy of  who created and edited information and who reccomended and/or shared it.

3.Reputation-Based Trust – This approach establishes trust based on personal experience of users. NaviGap incorporates user ranking functionality related to their posts and recommendations, the higher the ranking of a user, the more trusted they can be provide accurate and appropriate information. It also possible for users to flag inappropriate behaviour and/or users.

Though all are important in their own right, this post will mainly be focused on reputation based trust. In order to fully gain reputation-based trust an app will need to have a reputation, it is important to build up a positive reputation in order to successfully advertise, market and then progress the app.

Some factors to consider when gaining trust from users = competence, integrity and ability.

In order to show this the app will have to be tested and critiqued. Negative reviews are not great, but they can be just as important as positive reviews if handled correctly. The way app creators deal with their negative reviews show a lot about how well they can be trusted and indeed their integrity. This will help to side-step any negative influence if it is used as critique.

 

Practical Steps

  1. Reviews




It is important for NaviGap to get app store reviews which will help to build up user confidence in the app and what we are portraying to the public. This is imperative to a new app such as ours and can really help boost our profile in the app market.

 

  1. NaviGap Logo and “About us”

 

Having a Logo will ensure that NaviGap will appear professional and trustworthy and help to show that we take ourselves and our app seriously. Also when we connect through any other app  such as Hotmail or Facebook, it is important to ensure that this is mentioned in order to also show creditworthiness through bigger and trustworthy sites.

Also it is important to be transparent with users and to show who JAMR is and why we created the app to also convey that we are credible and our not ‘faceless.’




  1. Credentials and statistics.

 

Show any credentials we have and that we are certified in areas, which will help to build trust and reliance. Also important to showcase any user surveys results and our user statistics to show that we are open with our users and that we our proud of our users and how many we have gained in a short amount of time. Can also include followers on any social networking site we gather.

 

  1. Advertisements 

Ensuring that we are well known and build up a good user base, to show potential users that others believe in our products and create social interaction and attention.

 

  1. Making sure that Legal and other Policy issues are up to date.

Ensuring user protection is paramount to ensuring trust and being open and clear about what our obligations are and how we will protect our current and potential users.

 

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/himanshu-sareen/7-ways-to-build-an-app-th_b_7025536.html

 

Moreau. The foundations for provenance on the web. Foundations and Trends in Web Science (2009)

 

Fogg, B. J. and Tseng, H. (1999). The elements of computer credibility. In ACM CHI ’99, pg 80–87, New York, NY, USA.

 

Rousseau et al. Not so different after all: a cross-discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review (1998) vol. 23 pp. 393-404

 

Rotter, J. B. 1967. A new scale for the measurement of inter- personal trust. Journal of Personality. 35; 615-665

 

Berg and Dickhaut. Trust, reciprocity, and social history. Games and Economic Behavior (1995) vol. 10 (1) pp. 122-142

Lewis and Weigert. Trust as a social reality. Social Forces (1984) vol. 63 pp. 967-985