AP4L Project

By Dr Shalini, University of Surrey Major life events and transitions significantly shape a person's life, often requiring them to rebuild or redefine aspects of their identity. In times of identity change, individuals may turn to social media for support and guidance. When these transitions involve life-changing experiences, such as relationship breakups or coming out as LGBTQ+, people frequently share their stories on platforms like Reddit to connect with others and navigate the challenges they face. While such self-disclosures can be rewarding social interactions in a community of shared interests, they pose privacy risks and the threat of online harm. Social media facilitates sharing personal information that can inadvertently expose users to harm through piecing together contextual clues. Our research investigates techniques for detecting subtle privacy leaks in online narratives.  We provide the following major contributions during our research: Research into the identificati

By Dr Ramsay Meiklem While the AP4L team is currently completing work and preparing publications, I have offered to give an overview of time on the AP4L project and the insights it has given me. It has been 6 months since I joined the team based at University of Strathclyde, and it has been an interesting and eye-opening experience. My first step when joining the team back in January was getting to grips with the overall project, especially understanding who the outcomes of AP4L are intended to support and why. The opportunity to attend the all-hands meeting early on was an excellent chance to see where the different teams were focusing their efforts and the work to date, as well as what was to come. As a first step into cybersecurity and privacy as a domain, addressing the challenges faced by the four populations being explored in the project (i.e. Leaving the Armed Forces; LGBTQIA+; Living with Cancer; Relationship Breakdown) when sharing their significant life transitions online

By Nidhi Desai, University of Surrey Life transitions are major changes that people go through in the course of their lives. These changes can bring about new and unexpected challenges in unforeseen circumstances, with the potential to lead to distress. The AP4L project is developing ways of providing support for individuals as they go through such transitions. Some of the life transitions that the AP4l is focusing on [1][2] are coming out as LGBTQIA+, leaving the armed forces, a relationship breakdown or being diagnosed with a serious illness. During this critical time when someone is experiencing these major life events, receiving support can help people come through the life transition more confidently and strongly. Nevertheless, in the digital era, there are particular challenges in managing an online presence, which can make users vulnerable to online privacy and safety concerns. Nowadays, online support needs to be thoughtfully designed in order to take into account the needs

By Dr. Ryan Gibson and Prof. Wendy Moncur Introduction AP4L’s overarching goal is to develop privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) that support people undergoing a significant life transition to be safer online. The first step in building PETs that make a real difference is to understand what these people do online and the subsequent challenges they face. Central to this process is the involvement of participants from the four populations we are exploring in AP4L - Leaving the Armed Forces; LGBTQIA+; Living with Cancer; Relationship Breakdown – who can share their lived experience of transitioning online. These experiences may then be translated into design requirements for the development team to generate PETs that more accurately reflect the transition activities being conducted online and the related privacy risks and harms that people encounter. Nevertheless, designing and recruiting for research involving people who have undergone a life transition is extremely difficult.

  Karen Renaud (University of Strathclyde – karen.renaud@strath.ac.uk ) Michael McGuire (University of Surrey - m.mcguire@surrey.ac.uk) We have all been horrified and saddened as the full story of the Post Office case has unfolded in the public domain. We hear about harms to sub postmasters, to their families and their health and we wonder how it was possible for this injustice to occur at such a scale. Many are pointing to the kinds of collusions which have typically characterised the ‘crimes of the powerful’. The lies, the evasions, and the brazen cover-ups on the part of post office managers, the abject failure of politicians to exercise due diligence and the rewards given by the establishment to those who treated the postmasters so appallingly. However, there is a bigger picture that also needs to be considered, which we call out in McGuire and Renaud (2023). Technology powers everything we do: airplanes, devices we use to communicate globally, and our home appliances, to m

  By Dr Zhuo Hu, Dr Adrian Banks, Dr Irina Cojuharenco (University of Surrey)                                                                       As introduced in a previous blog post ( see brief overview of the AP4L project ) individuals experiencing life transitions become highly vulnerable and may neglect their online safety and privacy during these challenging periods.  The AP4L project is committed to supporting people undergoing significant life transitions to be safer online.  We acknowledge that the public should also get involved in our work to support people collectively, whether it involves donating to support events promoting cybersecurity risk awareness, taking part in the design of educational materials or, sharing best practice.  Behavioural science to date suggests that communicating risks with emotional narrative accounts of the experiences of victims of possible harms evokes more help than describing risks using “cold” statistics (Bakker et al., 2019; Lee & F