Journal article
“It Feels Like Whack-a-mole”: User Experiences of Data Removal from People Search Websites
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, v 2022(3), pp 159-178
Jul 2022
Abstract
People Search Websites aggregate and publicize users’ Personal Identifiable Information (PII), previously sourced from data brokers. This paper presents a qualitative study of the perceptions and experiences of 18 participants who sought information removal by hiring a removal service or requesting removal from the sites. The users we interviewed were highly motivated and had sophisticated risk perceptions. We found that they encountered obstacles during the removal process, resulting in a high cost of removal, whether they requested it themselves or hired a service. Participants perceived that the successful monetization of users PII motivates data aggregators to make the removal more difficult. Overall, self management of privacy by attempting to keep information off the internet is difficult and its’ success is hard to evaluate. We provide recommendations to users, third parties, removal services and researchers aiming to improve the removal process.
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Details
- Title
- “It Feels Like Whack-a-mole”: User Experiences of Data Removal from People Search Websites
- Creators
- Kejsi Take - New York UniversityKevin Gallagher - University of LisbonAndrea Forte - Drexel UniversityDamon McCoy - New York UniversityRachel Greenstadt - New York University
- Publication Details
- Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, v 2022(3), pp 159-178
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Information Science
- Other Identifier
- 991020531846804721