Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

9-2014

Abstract

Mobile instant messengers serve as major interaction media for everyday chats. Contrary to the belief that a message is seen only by a designated receiver, it can be accidentally exposed to someone nearby and could result in embarrassing moments, for example, when the receiver is viewing pictures together with his friend upon the message arrival. To understand the significance of the problem and core factors that cause such embarrassments, we collected 961 in-situ responses from 14 participants upon the actual message arrival and analyzed them from the perspective of the receiver's situation. The results showed that 29% of message arrivals have the potential to cause embarrassment. We found out that the relationship with a message sender and a nearby person influences the effect of participants' perception about the message exposure.

Keywords

mobile instant messenger, mobile message, privacy, smartphone, social appropriateness

Discipline

Information Security | Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

UbiComp '14 Adjunct: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: September 13-17, 2014, Seattle

First Page

1045

Last Page

1054

ISBN

9781450330473

Identifier

10.1145/2638728.2641288

Publisher

ACM

City or Country

New York

Additional URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2638728.2641288

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