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Privacy, Anonymity, and Perceived Risk in Open Collaboration: A Study of Tor Users and Wikipedians

Authors:

Nazanin Andalibi,

Rachel GreenstadtAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

Pages 1800 - 1811

https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998273

Published: 25 February 2017 Publication History

Abstract

This qualitative study examines privacy practices and concerns among contributors to open collaboration projects. We collected interview data from people who use the anonymity network Tor who also contribute to online projects and from Wikipedia editors who are concerned about their privacy to better understand how privacy concerns impact participation in open collaboration projects. We found that risks perceived by contributors to open collaboration projects include threats of surveillance, violence, harassment, opportunity loss, reputation loss, and fear for loved ones. We explain participants' operational and technical strategies for mitigating these risks and how these strategies affect their contributions. Finally, we discuss chilling effects associated with privacy loss, the need for open collaboration projects to go beyond attracting and educating participants to consider their privacy, and some of the social and technical approaches that could be explored to mitigate risk at a project or community level.

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Cited By

Champion KHill B(2024)Countering underproduction of peer produced goodsNew Media & Society10.1177/14614448241248139Online publication date: 16-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241248139
Choksi MBalso EKreuter FNissenbaum H(2024)Privacy for Groups Online: Context MattersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869458:CSCW2(1-23)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686945
Elmimouni HBaumer EForte A(2024)On Being an Expert: Habitus as a Lens for Understanding Privacy ExpertiseProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373798:CSCW1(1-25)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637379
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Privacy, Anonymity, and Perceived Risk in Open Collaboration: A Study of Tor Users and Wikipedians
1. Human-centered computing

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cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

February 2017

2556 pages

ISBN:9781450343350

DOI:10.1145/2998181

General Chairs:
Charlotte P. Lee
University of Washington
,
Steve Poltrock
Retired
,
Program Chairs:
Louise Barkhuus
Stockholm University and Cornell Tech
,
Marcos Borges
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
,
Wendy Kellogg
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 February 2017

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National Science Foundation

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CSCW '17

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CSCW '17: Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

February 25 - March 1, 2017

Oregon, Portland, USA

Acceptance Rates

CSCW '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 183 of 530 submissions, 35%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

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CSCW '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

October 18 - 22, 2025

Bergen , Norway

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Cited By

Champion KHill B(2024)Countering underproduction of peer produced goodsNew Media & Society10.1177/14614448241248139Online publication date: 16-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241248139
Choksi MBalso EKreuter FNissenbaum H(2024)Privacy for Groups Online: Context MattersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869458:CSCW2(1-23)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686945
Elmimouni HBaumer EForte A(2024)On Being an Expert: Habitus as a Lens for Understanding Privacy ExpertiseProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373798:CSCW1(1-25)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637379
Champion KHill B(2023)Taboo and Collaborative Knowledge Production: Evidence from WikipediaProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100907:CSCW2(1-25)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610090
Warncke-Wang MHo RMiller MJohnson I(2023)Increasing Participation in Peer Production Communities with the Newcomer HomepageProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100717:CSCW2(1-26)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610071
McDonald NAndalibi N(2023)“I Did Watch ‘The Handmaid's Tale’”: Threat Modeling Privacy Post-roe in the United StatesACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/358996030:4(1-34)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589960
Goldberg AFanti GShah N(2023)Batching of Tasks by Users of Pseudonymous Forums: Anonymity Compromise and ProtectionProceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems10.1145/35793357:1(1-41)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3579335
Zent M(2023)Anonymous Online Support: Investigations of Identity and Heterogeneous Groups in Online Recovery SupportExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3583947(1-8)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3583947
Dou WXu XYu SDou WXu XYu S(2023)User Data Privacy Protection in Industrial ApplicationIntelligent Industrial Internet Systems10.1007/978-981-99-5732-3_6(101-121)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5732-3_6
Elmimouni HShusas ESkeba PBaumer EForte A(2023)What Makes a Technology Privacy Enhancing? Laypersons’ and Experts’ Descriptions, Uses, and Perceptions of Privacy Enhancing TechnologiesInformation for a Better World: Normality, Virtuality, Physicality, Inclusivity10.1007/978-3-031-28032-0_20(229-250)Online publication date: 10-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28032-0_20
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