Awareness about Photos on the Web and How Privacy-Privacy-Tradeoffs Could Help

Many privacy issues concerning photos on the Web and particularly the social Web have been discussed in the past. However, much of this discussion is based on anecdotal evidence and has focused on media uploaded by users themselves. We present the results of a survey conducted with 414 participants that studies user awareness of privacy issues concerning the sharing of media including media shared by others. We additionally investigate the current perception of metadata privacy, since metadata can amplify threats posed by photos on the Web, for instance by tagging people or linking photos to locations. Furthermore, we present how this metadata can be used to help to protect private information and discuss the concept of a privacy-privacy-tradeoff and how this can be used to enable people to discover photos relevant to them and therefore regain control of their media privacy.