Carola Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco and Irina Todorova, Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008, 440 pp., $29.95 hb. (IS...

Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society

Since the popularisation of the Internet in the 1990s, the cyberspace has kept evolving. We have created various computer-mediated virtual environments including social networks, video conferencing, virtual 3D worlds (e.g., VR Chat), augmented reality applications (e.g., Pokemon Go), and Non-Fungible Token Games (e.g., Upland). Such virtual environments, albeit non-perpetual and unconnected, have bought us various degrees of digital transformation. The term `metaverse' has been coined to further facilitate the digital transformation in every aspect of our physical lives. At the core of the metaverse stands the vision of an immersive Internet as a gigantic, unified, persistent, and shared realm. While the metaverse may seem futuristic, catalysed by emerging technologies such as Extended Reality, 5G, and Artificial Intelligence, the digital `big bang' of our cyberspace is not far away. This survey paper presents the first effort to offer a comprehensive framework that examines the latest metaverse development under the dimensions of state-of-the-art technologies and metaverse ecosystems, and illustrates the possibility of the digital `big bang'. First, technologies are the enablers that drive the transition from the current Internet to the metaverse. We thus examine eight enabling technologies rigorously - Extended Reality, User Interactivity (Human-Computer Interaction), Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Computer Vision, IoT and Robotics, Edge and Cloud computing, and Future Mobile Networks. In terms of applications, the metaverse ecosystem allows human users to live and play within a self-sustaining, persistent, and shared realm. Therefore, we discuss six user-centric factors -- Avatar, Content Creation, Virtual Economy, Social Acceptability, Security and Privacy, and Trust and Accountability. Finally, we propose a concrete research agenda for the development of the metaverse.

All One Needs to Know about Metaverse: A Complete Survey on Technological Singularity, Virtual Ecosystem, and Research Agenda

/pdf/it-s-complicated-the-social-lives-of-networked-teens-4ob76uhlh6.pdf

It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

In the United States, identity theft resulted in corporate and consumer losses of $56 billion dollars in 2005, with up to 35 percent of known identity thefts caused by corporate data breaches. Many states have responded by adopting “data breach disclosure laws” that require firms to notify consumers if their personal information has been lost or stolen. While the laws are expected to reduce identity theft, their effect has yet to be empirically measured. We use panel data from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to estimate the impact of data breach disclosure laws on identity theft from 2002 to 2009. We find that adoption of data breach disclosure laws reduce identity theft caused by data breaches by 6.1 percent, on average.

Do Data Breaches Disclosure Laws Reduce Identity Theft

A flame detector that warns people not to puff on their cigarettes before they have even lit up has reduced the number of smokers standing at the entrance to a Liverpool hospital.

What is an Early Warning System

Undocumented immigrants in the United States face risks of discrimination, surveillance, and deportation. We investigate their technology use, risk perceptions, and protective strategies relating to their vulnerability. Through semi-structured interviews with Latinx undocumented immigrants, we find that while participants act to address offline threats, this vigilance does not translate to their online activities. Their technology use is shaped by needs and benefits rather than risk perceptions. While our participants are concerned about identity theft and privacy generally, and some raise concerns about online harassment, their understanding of government surveillance risks is vague and met with resignation. We identify tensions among self-expression, group privacy, and self-censorship related to their immigration status, as well as strong trust in service providers. Our findings have implications for digital literacy education, privacy and security interfaces, and technology design in general. Even minor design decisions can substantially affect exposure risks and well-being for such vulnerable communities.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3173574.3173688

Keeping a Low Profile?: Technology, Risk and Privacy among Undocumented Immigrants

Equifax, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus, experienced a large-scale data breach in 2017. We investigated consumers' mental models of credit bureaus, how they perceive risks from this data breach, whether they took protective measures, and their reasons for inaction through 24 semi-structured interviews. We find that participants' mental models of credit bureaus are incomplete and partially inaccurate. Although many participants were aware of and concerned about the Equifax breach, few knew whether they were affected, and even fewer took protective measures after the breach. We find that this behavior is not primarily influenced by accuracy of mental models or risk awareness, but rather by costs associated with protective measures, optimism bias in estimating one's likelihood of victimization, sources of advice, and a general tendency towards delaying action until harm has occurred. We discuss legal, technical and educational implications and directions towards better protecting consumers in the credit reporting system.

/pdf/i-ve-got-nothing-to-lose-consumers-risk-perceptions-and-466hn7bkf7.pdf

I've got nothing to lose: consumers' risk perceptions and protective actions after the equifax data breach

Early warning dashboards in higher education analyze student data to enable early identification of underperforming students, allowing timely interventions by faculty and staff. To understand perceptions regarding the ethics and impact of such learning analytics applications, we conducted a multi-stakeholder analysis of an early-warning dashboard deployed at the University of Michigan through semi-structured interviews with the system's developers, academic advisors (the primary users), and students. We identify multiple tensions among and within the stakeholder groups, especially with regard to awareness, understanding, access and use of the system. Furthermore, ambiguity in data provenance and data quality result in differing levels of reliance and concerns about the system among academic advisors and students. While students see the system's benefits, they argue for more involvement, control, and informed consent regarding the use of student data. We discuss our findings' implications for the ethical design and deployment of learning analytics applications in higher education. Early warning dashboards in higher education analyze student data to enable early identification of underperforming students, allowing timely interventions by faculty and staff. To understand perceptions regarding the ethics and impact of such learning analytics applications, we conducted a multi-stakeholder analysis of an early-warning dashboard deployed at the University of Michigan through semi-structured interviews with the system's developers, academic advisors (the primary users), and students. We identify multiple tensions among and within the stakeholder groups, especially with regard to awareness, understanding, access, and use of the system. Furthermore, ambiguity in data provenance and data quality result in differing levels of reliance and concerns about the system among academic advisors and students. While students see the system's benefits, they argue for more involvement, control, and informed consent regarding the use of student data. We discuss our findings' implications for the ethical design and deployment of learning analytics applications in higher education.

It's My Data! Tensions Among Stakeholders of a Learning Analytics Dashboard

Mobile ads pose privacy and security risks to consumers, including behavior tracking, malware, and inappropriate or biased content. Advertising networks connect mobile app developers with advertisers, enabling in-app advertising. We conducted a mixed-methods study with mobile app developers, consisting of survey and semi-structured interviews, to better understand why and how they partner with advertising networks, and their considerations of consumer risks in those interactions. Our findings focus on app developers who work independently or in smaller companies. We find that developers use advertising because they see it as the only viable way to monetize their app. Developers mostly choose an advertising network based on perceptions of which ad networks are popular rather than a holistic assessment. Despite claims of optimizing for profitability or consumer well-being, developers largely keep ad networks’ default configurations. Developers are resigned to ad-related consumer risks, seeing themselves as unable to and not responsible for addressing the risks. Based on our findings, we discuss recommendations for mitigating consumer risks of mobile advertising.

/pdf/we-can-t-live-without-them-app-developers-adoption-of-ad-4nzuy6uvu7.pdf

"We Can't Live Without Them!" App Developers' Adoption of Ad Networks and Their Considerations of Consumer Risks.

Abstract Internet of Things and smart home technologies pose challenges for providing effective privacy controls to users, as smart devices lack both traditional screens and input interfaces. We investigate the potential for leveraging interpersonal communication cues as privacy controls in the IoT context, in particular for smart speakers. We propose privacy controls based on two kinds of interpersonal communication cues – gaze direction and voice volume level – that only selectively activate a smart speaker’s microphone or voice recognition when the device is being addressed, in order to avoid constant listening and speech recognition by the smart speaker microphones and reduce false device activation. We implement these privacy controls in a smart speaker prototype and assess their feasibility, usability and user perception in two lab studies. We find that privacy controls based on interpersonal communication cues are practical, do not impair the smart speaker’s functionality, and can be easily used by users to selectively mute the microphone. Based on our findings, we discuss insights regarding the use of interpersonal cues as privacy controls for smart speakers and other IoT devices.

https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.2478/popets-2020-0026

Abraham H. Mhaidli

Papers

Keeping a Low Profile?: Technology, Risk and Privacy among Undocumented Immigrants

I've got nothing to lose: consumers' risk perceptions and protective actions after the equifax data breach

It's My Data! Tensions Among Stakeholders of a Learning Analytics Dashboard

"We Can't Live Without Them!" App Developers' Adoption of Ad Networks and Their Considerations of Consumer Risks.

Listen Only When Spoken To: Interpersonal Communication Cues as Smart Speaker Privacy Controls