We often think of privacy like secrecy. We want to keep our information safe and out of the eyes of others. But privacy is just as much about trust: who do we want to share our information with and why? This project looks at the emotional and social dynamics of privacy and trust in intimate relationships, when people want to give each other access to sensitive information, and inspects the social norms and expectations that enable intimate trusting relationships between parents, friends, children, and partners in a digital realm.

Our group has previously considered several other aspects of this topic in the context of social insider attacks. In Vulnerability & Blame: Making Sense of Unauthorized Access to Smartphones (CHI’19), and Characterizing Social Insider Attacks on Facebook (CHI’17), we examined stories from people whose partners and friends violated their trust and accessed their phones and applications without permission. We found that people wanted to be vulnerable within their intimate relationships as a way to build trust, but that such trust was seriously and commonly abused—often with severe consequences. Now, we are extending that work to see how people with intersecting identities (e.g., sexuality, age, cultural background) navigate the conflicting value systems of their different worlds when sharing their digital lives.