Asks Ross Anderson on a Cambridge economics and security resource page: do we spend enough on keeping ‘hackers’ out of our computer systems? Do we not spend enough or do we spend too much? Do we spend too little on the police and the army, or too much? And do we spend our security budgets on the right things?
Dr. Richard Clayton’s work at the University of Cambridge tackles these issues and more.
They also now have a blog called Light Blue Touch Paper where he and other colleagues write regularly about issues around security and security research.
A recent post by Joseph Bonneau for example addresses the economics of privacy in social networks, more relevant to our world in Silicon Valley.
He writes about his experience:
We often think of social networking to Facebook, MySpace, and the also-rans, but in reality there are there are tons of social networks out there, dozens which have membership in the millions.
Around the world it’s quite a competitive market. Sören Preibusch and I decided to study the whole ecosystem to analyse how free-market competition has shaped the privacy practices which I’ve been complaining about.
We carefully examined 45 sites, collecting over 250 data points about each sites’ privacy policies, privacy controls, data collection practices, and more. The results were fascinating, as we presented this week at the WEIS conference in London.
The most interesting story we found though was how sites consistently hid any mention of privacy, until we visited the privacy policies where they provided paid privacy seals and strong reassurances about how important privacy is.
We developed a novel economic explanation for this: sites appear to craft two different messages for two different populations. Most users care about privacy about privacy but don’t think about it in day-to-day life.
Sites take care to avoid mentioning privacy to them, because even mentioning privacy positively will cause them to be more cautious about sharing data. This phenomenon is known as “privacy salience” and it makes sites tread very carefully around privacy, because users must be comfortable sharing data for the site to be fun.
Instead of mentioning privacy, new users are shown a huge sample of other users posting fun pictures, which encourages them to share as well.
For privacy fundamentalists who go looking for privacy by reading the privacy policy, though, it is important to drum up privacy re-assurance.
Cambridge held their annual bash on Economics and Information Security in London shortly before we arrived: June 24-25. They also held a security and human behavior workshop, which brought together security engineers with psychologists, behavioral economists and others.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
