Bio:
Prof. Ronald Leenes is associate professor in IT, law and new technologies at TILT, the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (Tilburg University). His primary research interests are privacy and identity management, regulation of, and by, technology. He is also involved in research in ID fraud, biometrics and Online Dispute Resolution. Leenes (1964) studied Public Administration and Public Policy at the University of Twente. He received his PhD for a study on hard cases in law and Artificial Intelligence and Law from the same university. Prof. Leenes was work package leader on socio-cultural aspects of privcay-enhancing IDM in the EU FP6 PRIME project. Currently he leads a work package on social software in the FP7 PrimeLife project. He has contributed to and edited various deliverables for the EU FP6 Network of Excellence "Future of IDentity in the Information Society" (FIDIS).
Where the rubber meets the road: Privacy and Sociability in social network sites
Abstract:
SNSs pose a plethora of privacy issues that are reasonably well understood (see ENISA study, art 29 wp report etc). These studies contain all sorts of recommendations, but most prominently call for raising awareness of the SNS users as well as implementing security measures. This advice is not very helpful because it underestimates the innate social aspects of SNSs and how these platforms meet the social needs of their users. In order to be more effective we need to understand the social dynamics of social networks. I will briefly discuss why teens have no choice but to be on SNSs and on SNSs, data disclosure is the norm. Next I will focus on a couple of approaches to reconcile privacy and sociability in SNS. I will discuss two kinds of attackers in more detail: snoopers (parents, teachers, employers) and platform providers who harvest the data as part of their business model, and discuss remedies for their attacks.