🤖 AI Summary
Unintentional information disclosure by users in digital environments poses significant risks—including identity theft and privacy violations—necessitating empirically grounded insights into user behavior and mental models. This study systematically reviews 101 empirical papers published at top-tier conferences between 2018 and 2023, offering the first large-scale, cross-contextual classification and methodological comparison of unintentional disclosure research across data privacy, browser security, and privacy tool usage. Applying mixed-methods coding analysis, we identify critical gaps: a severe paucity of experimental studies and disproportionate focus on privacy and browser contexts. Our core contributions are threefold: (1) a novel, cross-contextual analytical framework for unintentional disclosure; (2) user-centered design principles for mitigating associated risks; and (3) an empirically grounded foundation and research agenda for next-generation privacy-enhancing technologies.
📝 Abstract
The exchange of personal information in digital environments poses significant risks, including identity theft, privacy breaches, and data misuse. Addressing these challenges requires a deep understanding of user behavior and mental models in diverse contexts. This paper presents a systematic literature review of empirical user studies on unintentional information disclosure in usable security, covering 101 papers published across six leading conferences from 2018 to 2023. The studies are categorized based on methodologies-quantitative and qualitative-and analyzed for their applications in various scenarios. Major subtopics, including data privacy, security in browsers, and privacy tools, are examined to highlight research trends and focal areas. This review provides details on topics and application areas that have received the most research attention. Moreover, by comparing descriptive and experimental approaches, findings aim to guide researchers of strategies to mitigate risks associated with online everyday interaction.