Online Photo Privacy - Phase 2:
Investigating Obfuscation's Potential to Combat Photo Self-Censorship

Online Social Network (OSN) users self-censor or withhold content to achieve privacy. Photos, which contain rich visual information, are a likely, but unexplored, target for self-censorship. In this work, I report results from a survey eliciting data about photo self-censorship on OSNs. I collected data from 230 participants in the United States, quantified the prevalence of self-reported photo self-censorship and associated this with gender, age, privacy preference, Internet and OSN usage, and interrogated whether privacy-preserving obfuscations, such as blurring, may be useful for combating photo self-censorship. My results indicate that over half of participants have self-censored photos on OSNs and privacy-conscious people are more inclined to censor photos. I also find that women are more likely to report they would share a photo they had previously self-censored if they were able to obfuscate portions of the photo to enhance privacy. I am preparing the manuscript for a journal publication.

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Research Method:
Online survey

Participants:
230 participants recruited on Amazon MTurk

Independent Variables:

• Gender

• Age

• Internet usage frequency

• OSN usage frequency

• Privacy preference/consciousness about personal information

Dependent Variables:

• If the user has declined to upload a photo to an OSN for privacy reasons

• If the user is willing to upload the photo which he/she has previously refused to share if they are able to obscure the sensitive portion

Quantitative Analysis Method:

• Logistic regression model