Heather Patterson and Helen Nissenbaum, Context-Dependent Expectations of Privacy in Self-Generated Mobile Health Data

Heather Patterson and Helen Nissenbaum, Context-Dependent Expectations of Privacy in Self-Generated Mobile Health Data

Comment by: Katie Shilton

PLSC 2013

Workshop draft abstract:

Rapid developments in health self-quantification via ubiquitous computing point to a future in which individuals will collect health-relevant information using smart phone apps and health sensors, and share that data online for purposes of self-experimentation, community building, and research. However, online disclosures of intimate bodily details coupled with growing contemporary practices of data mining and profiling may lead to radically inappropriate flows of fitness, personal habit, and mental health information, potentially jeopardizing individuals’ social status, insurability, and employment opportunities. In the absence of clear statutory or regulatory protections for self-generated health information, its privacy and security rest heavily on robust individual data management practices, which in turn rest on users’ understandings of information flows, legal protections, and commercial terms of service. Currently, little is known about how individuals understand their privacy rights in self-generated health data under existing laws or commercial policies, or how their beliefs guide their information management practices. In this qualitative research study, we interview users of popular self-quantification fitness and wellness services, such as Fitbit, to learn (1) how self-tracking individuals understand their privacy rights in self-generated health information versus clinically generated medical information; (2) how user beliefs about perceived privacy protections and information flows guide their data management practices; and (3) whether commercial and clinical data distribution practices violate users’ context-dependent informational norms regarding access to intimate details about health and personal well-being. Understanding information sharing attitudes, behaviors, and practices among self-quantifying individuals will extend current conceptions of context-dependent information flows to a new and developing health-related environment, and may promote appropriately privacy-protective health IT tools, practices, and policies among sensor and app developers and policy makers.