AP4L Project

  By Lorraine Wright, Lecturer in Psychology/PhD candidate/Research Assistant in Psychology, Edge Hill University It’s a year since we wrote a blog about the PIP panel. An integral part of the AP4L project, the PIP panel is based on a public involvement model adopted as routine practice within health and social care and associated research (UK Standards for Public Involvement, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), 2019). The PIP panel has been developed and adapted to meet the project's requirements while still keeping the public involvement model’s standards at the core of the panel.   Comprised of members of the public who are ‘experts by experience, ’ the PIP panel has eight public partner members, two for each of the transitions involved in the study (serious illness, leaving the forces, relationship breakdown, and coming out as LGBT+). The group meets bi-monthly online for an hour. Over the last 22 months, the PIP panel has met 11 times, averaging ...

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, ...