Human Aspects

Social networks provide many benefits, but also give rise to serious concerns regarding privacy. Indeed, since privacy protections are not intrinsically incorporated into the underlying technological framework, user data is still accessible to the social network and is open to misuse. While there have been efforts to incorporate privacy into social networks, existing solutions are not sufficiently lightweight, transparent, and functional, and therefore have achieved only limited adoption.

As companies collect consumer data in increasingly larger quantity and mine the data more deeply, trade-offs arise with respect to companies' practices about information privacy. A company may choose practices that augment targeted advertisements or services. However, the financial rewards associated with privacy practices are highly uncertain, since they are affected by a company's competition with rivals.

Advances in digital communication technologies, and their proliferation in recent decades, have had a remarkable impact on journalism. Security weaknesses in these technologies have put journalists and their sources increasingly at risk, hindering efforts at investigative reporting, transparency, and whistleblowing. Because of their willingness to be early adopters, and to openly communicate their issues, journalists provide an opportunity to identify security issues and requirements in new communication methods.

Ubiquitous computing technologies such as "smart" door locks, thermostats, fitness trackers and video monitors can help make users' lives safer and more efficient. These devices automatically collect data about users and their activities within their homes, which are then combined and processed by algorithms on a cloud server owned by the service provider. This enables beneficial system functionality that would not be possible from the devices in isolation.

Security and privacy are prominent concerns in modern communications. Although cryptographic approaches have been widely studied to protect a message's content from deciphering by an eavesdropper, there are many times when hiding the very existence of the communication is critical. The hiding of communication, termed covert (private) communication, is important in many domains such as covert military operations, and removing the ability of users to be tracked in their everyday activities.