Kavous Salehzadeh Niksirat, University of Lausanne / Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy; Lev Velykoivanenko, University of Lausanne; Samuel Mätzler, University of Zurich; Stephan Mulders, Maastricht University; Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux, Marc-Olivier Boldi, Mathias Humbert, and Kévin Huguenin, University of Lausanne
Interdependent privacy (IDP), which refers to situations where individuals affect the privacy of others, is a growing concern and has been studied in various contexts. Digital address books (DABs), where users store personal information about others on online services, are a compelling yet understudied case of IDP. In this paper, we present a multi-faceted analysis of DABs. In particular, we conducted two online survey studies with N = 463 and N = 459 DAB users to understand how they interact with their DABs, perceive and manage associated privacy risks, and support data protection rights. Our studies notably reveal that (i) the privacy leakage due to DABs is substantial, (ii) users are well aware of the privacy (incl. IDP) risks of DAB data but have only moderate privacy concerns and are quite comfortable granting access to this data, and (iii) users are relatively open to respecting the rights of data subjects. We conclude with concrete design recommendations for a privacy-aware DAB ecosystem.
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author = {Kavous Salehzadeh Niksirat and Lev Velykoivanenko and Samuel M{\"a}tzler and Stephan Mulders and Aurelia Tam{\`o}-Larrieux and Marc-Olivier Boldi and Mathias Humbert and Kevin Huguenin},
title = {Addressing the Address Books{\textquoteright} (Interdependent) Privacy Issues},
booktitle = {34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 25)},
year = {2025},
isbn = {978-1-939133-52-6},
address = {Seattle, WA},
pages = {6501--6520},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity25/presentation/niksirat},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}
