Usable Security - Usable Privacy

1. Guidelines for usable privacy:

• Make privacy systems match users' expectations from previous experiences.
• Clearly indicate what information will be shared, with whom, and how.
• Make privacy part of the natural workflow

2. A mobile app uses a phone's microphone to listen in the background for commercials, songs, and TV shows that a person is hearing in order to target ads at the user. The app does not store any information about users' conversations nor does it store recordings. Should the app disclose that it is listening to this background sound?

• Yes, users should be informed that sound from their environment is being collected.

3. Alternatives to privacy policies can be as effective in teaching users about how their data is shared.
4. Following attributes can be automatically inferred on social media, even if users don't provide any obvious clues:

• Intelligence
• Personality
• Sexual Orientation

5. Informed Consent: A person knows how their data is used and competently agrees to that use.


6. A website provides an extensive 50-printed-page privacy policy written in common language that describes every detail of how users' data is collected, used, and shared. What is violated here?

• The policy does not meet the requirement of minimal distraction

7.Providing complete and detailed explanations of how data is collected and used can overwhelm the user and lead to a less usable privacy system.