In response to increasing social engineering attacks, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) apps have implemented a variety of nudges to deter users from responding to fraudulent payment requests. We conducted a scenario-based semi-structured interview study with 46 Indian participants who tested the impact of various user interface nudges to help them discern a mixture of fraudulent and non-fraudulent payment scenarios. Our study revealed a multi-stage de cision-making process: participants relied on a digital literacy and security concern-based risk assessment, which is further influenced by their trust in the recipient as well as the perceived need of the financial transaction. Our results demonstrate that while most nudges help to combat fraudulent transactions, participants perceived “badges” (a nudge signaling the trustworthiness of the receiver) to be most effective in combating fraud. We conclude with concrete recommendations for current and future UPI developers.

Cross-cultural communication often results in misaligned norms and expectations, leading to misunderstandings or harm.As the internet increasingly facilitates cross-cultural communication online, such misalignments also increase.However, there is an opportunity to use Large Language Models (LLMs) to detect such misunderstandings and assist in addressing them.To that end, this study investigates whether cross-cultural norm violations can be detected and mitigated using popular LLMs.Using a set of carefully constructed cross-cultural communication scenarios, half of which present norm violations, we test the ability of OpenAI's GPT-4 Omni (GPT-4o) model to identify cross-cultural communication norm violations.We find that GPT-4o classification accuracy varies by the stated age, gender, and nationality of the communicators described in the scenarios, suggesting a lack of fairness and a potential cultural gap in GPT-4o's detection.

Youth, while tech-savvy and highly active on social media, are still vulnerable to online privacy and security risks. Therefore, it is critical to understand how they negotiate and manage social connections versus protecting themselves in online contexts. In this work, we conducted a thematic analysis of 1,318 private conversations on Instagram from 149 youth aged 13-21 to understand the digital privacy and security topics they discussed, if and how they engaged in risky privacy behaviors, and how they balanced the benefits and risks (i.e., privacy calculus) of making these decisions. Overall, youth were forthcoming when broaching a wide range of topics on digital privacy and security, ranging from password management and account access challenges to shared experiences of being victims of privacy risks. However, they also openly engaged in risky behaviors, such as sharing personal account information with peers and even perpetrating privacy and security risks against others. Nonetheless, we found many of these behaviors could be explained by the unique ''privacy calculus'' of youth, where they often prioritized social benefits over potential risks; for instance, youth often shared account credentials with peers to foster social connection and affirmation. As such, we provide a nuanced understanding of youth decision-making regarding digital security and privacy, highlighting both positive behaviors, tensions, and points of concern. We encourage future research to continue to challenge the potentially untrue narratives regarding youth and their digital privacy and security to unpack the nuance of their privacy calculus that may differ from that of adults.

Marketing firms are starting to leverage Generative-AI-based chatbots as a more persuasive form of advertising. This is potentially more harmful for autistic young adults with substantial support needs who tend to have lower financial literacy, be more trusting of bad actors when communicating through social technologies, and more likely to anthropomorphize objects. Thus, we investigated whether a chatbot assuming the likeness of a favorite celebrity would more greatly influence consumer preferences of this population when compared against either autistic individuals without substantial support needs or the general population. We conducted an experimental survey where participants 1) ranked their preferences of various consumer items, 2) performed intervening tasks answering several questions, 3) viewed a chatbot interaction where the chatbot exhibited opposite consumer preferences, and then 4) re-ranked their preferences for those items. We found that autistic young adults with substantial support needs were more likely to change their preferences than the sample from the general population. Moreover, they were also more likely to change their preferences than autistic young adults without substantial support needs. These findings suggest that autistic individuals with substantial support needs are more susceptible to celebrity chatbot persuasion. We discuss the risks and guardrails that need to be associated with deploying generative-AI-based chatbots for targeted advertising.

We are again thrilled to be able to present the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) community with an issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, containing very interesting and relevant scholarship from its members. This issue includes 211 papers, of which 192 were accepted from the January 2024 cycle, and 19 were accepted from the July 2024 cycle. It reflects great efforts and contributions from external reviewers, Associate Chairs and Editors, who together have conducted a rigorous review process to select contributions of the highest quality advancing the CSCW field. As Track Chairs, we are grateful for the community's collective efforts to continue shaping and sharing CSCW's tradition of high-quality scholarship across the years.

We are again thrilled to be able to present the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) community with an issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, containing very interesting and relevant scholarship from its members. This issue includes 313 papers, of which 45 were accepted from the January 2024 cycle, 85 were accepted from the July 2025 cycle, and 183 were accepted from the October 2025 cycle. It reflects great efforts and contributions from external reviewers, Associate Chairs and Editors, who together have conducted a rigorous review process to select contributions of the highest quality advancing the CSCW field. As Track Chairs, we are grateful for the community's collective efforts to continue shaping and sharing CSCW's tradition of high-quality scholarship across the years.

We conducted an ethnographically-informed study with 28 participants (9 autistic Young Adults or "YAs" in need of substantial daily support, 6 parents, 13 support staff) to understand how autistic YAs self-regulate and receive mediation on social media. We found that autistic YAs relied on blanket boundary rules and struggled with impulse control; therefore, they coped by asking their support network to help them deal with negative social experiences. Their support networks responded by providing informal advice, in-the-moment instruction, and formal education, but often resorted to monitoring and restrictive mediation when more proactive approaches were ineffective. Overall, we saw boundary tensions arise between Autistic YAs and their support networks as they struggled to find the right balance between providing oversight versus promoting autonomy. This work contributes to the critical disability literature by revealing the benefits and tensions of allyship in the context of helping young autistic adults navigate social media.

Recent work explores how to educate and encourage users to protect their online privacy. We tested the efficacy of short videos for educating users about targeted advertising on Facebook. We designed a video that utilized an emotional appeal to explain risks associated with targeted advertising (fear appeal), and which demonstrated how to use the associated ad privacy settings (digital literacy). We also designed a version of this video which additionally showed the viewer their personal Facebook ad profile, facilitating personal reflection on how they are currently being profiled (reflective learning). We conducted an experiment (n = 127) in which participants watched a randomly assigned video and measured the impact over the following 10 weeks. We found that these videos significantly increased user engagement with Facebook advertising preferences, especially for those who viewed the reflective learning content. However, those who only watched the fear appeal content were more likely to disengage with Facebook as a whole.

We present an exploration of cultural norms surrounding online disclosure of information about one's interpersonal relationships (such as information about family members, colleagues, friends, or lovers) on Twitter. The literature identifies the cultural dimension of individualism versus collectivism as being a major determinant of offline communication differences in terms of emotion, topic, and content disclosed. We decided to study whether such differences also occur online in context of Twitter when comparing tweets posted in an individualistic (U.S.) versus a collectivist (India) society. We collected more than 2 million tweets posted in the U.S. and India over a 3 month period which contain interpersonal relationship keywords. A card-sort study was used to develop this culturally-sensitive saturated taxonomy of keywords that represent interpersonal relationships (e.g., ma, mom, mother). Then we developed a high-accuracy interpersonal disclosure detector based on dependency-parsing (F1-score: 86%) to identify when the words refer to a personal relationship of the poster (e.g., "my mom" as opposed to "a mom"). This allowed us to identify the 400K+ tweets in our data set which actually disclose information about the poster's interpersonal relationships. We used a mixed methods approach to analyze these tweets (e.g., comparing the amount of joy expressed about one's family) and found differences in emotion, topic, and content disclosed between tweets from the U.S. versus India. Our analysis also reveals how a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods are needed to uncover these differences; Using just one or the other can be misleading. This study extends the prior literature on Multi-Party Privacy and provides guidance for researchers and designers of culturally-sensitive systems.

We conducted a user study with 380 Android users, profiling them according to two key privacy behaviors: the number of apps installed and the Dangerous permissions granted to those apps. We identified four unique privacy profiles: 1) Privacy Balancers (49.74% of participants), 2) Permission Limiters (28.68%), 3) App Limiters (14.74%), and 4) the Privacy Unconcerned (6.84%). App and Permission Limiters were significantly more concerned about perceived surveillance than Privacy Balancers and the Privacy Unconcerned. App Limiters had the lowest number of apps installed on their devices with the lowest intention of using apps and sharing information with them, compared to Permission Limiters who had the highest number of apps installed and reported higher intention to share information with apps. The four profiles reflect the differing privacy management strategies, perceptions, and intentions of Android users that go beyond the binary decision to share or withhold information via mobile apps.

Social media can facilitate numerous benefits, ranging from facilitating access to social, instrumental, financial, and other support, to professional development and civic participation. However, these benefits may not be generalizable to all users. Therefore, we conducted an ethnographic case study with eight Autistic young adults, ten staff members, and four parents to understand how Autistic users of social media engage with others, as well as any unintended consequences of use. We leveraged an affordances perspective to understand how Autistic young adults share and consume user-generated content, make connections, and engage in networked interactions with others via social media. We found that they often used a literal interpretation of digital affordances that sometimes led to negative consequences including physical harm, financial loss, social anxiety, feelings of exclusion, and inadvertently damaging their social relationships. We make recommendations for redesigning social media affordances to be more inclusive of neurodiverse users.

To understand the underlying process of users’ information disclosure decisions, scholars often use either the privacy calculus framework or refer to heuristic shortcuts. It is unclear whether the decision process varies by age. Therefore, using these common frameworks, we conducted a web-based experiment with 94 participants, who were younger (ages 19-22) or older (65+) adults, to understand how perceived app trust, sensitivity of the data, and benefits of disclosure influence users disclosure decisions. Younger adults were more likely to change their perception of data sensitivity based on trust, while older adults were more likely to disclose information based on perceived benefits of disclosure. These results suggest older adults made more rationally calculated decisions than younger adults, who made heuristic decisions based on app trust. Our findings negate the mainstream narrative that older adults are less privacy-conscious than younger adults; instead, older adults weigh the benefits and risks of information disclosure.

Various contact tracing approaches have been applied to help contain the spread of COVID-19, with technology-based tracing and human tracing among the most widely adopted. However, governments and communities worldwide vary in their adoption of digital contact tracing, with many instead choosing the human approach. We investigate how people perceive the respective benefits and risks of human and digital contact tracing through a mixed-methods survey with 291 respondents from the United States. Participants perceived digital contact tracing as more beneficial for protecting privacy, providing convenience, and ensuring data accuracy, and felt that human contact tracing could help provide security, emotional reassurance, advice, and accessibility. We explore the role of self-tracking technologies in public health crisis situations, highlighting how designs must adapt to promote societal benefit rather than just self-understanding. We discuss how future digital contact tracing can better balance the benefits of human tracers and technology amidst the complex contact tracing process and context.

Foster youth are particularly vulnerable to offline risks; yet, little is known about their online risk experiences or how foster parents mediate technology use in the home. We conducted 29 interviews with foster parents of 42 teens (ages 13-17) who were part of the child welfare system. Foster parents faced significant challenges relating to technology mediation in the home. Based on parental accounts, over half of the foster teens encountered high-risk situations that involved interacting with unsafe people online, resulting in rape, sex trafficking, and/or psychological harm. Overall, foster parents were at a loss for how to balance online safety with technology access in a way that engendered positive relationships with their foster teens. Instead, parents often resorted to outright restriction. Our research highlights the importance of considering the unique needs of foster families and designing technologies to address the challenges faced by this vulnerable population of teens and parents.

Social media privacy features can act as a mechanism for regulating interpersonal relationships, but why do some people not use these features? Through an interview study of 56 social media users, we found two high-level perspectives towards social media and privacy that affected attitudes towards and usage of privacy features. Some users took a pragmatic approach to using social media and felt comfortable using various privacy features as a tool to manage their social relationships (e.g., avoiding bothersome posts, not feeling compelled to interact). However, there were also users who viewed taking such privacy actions as a relational hindrance and were concerned how using certain features to meet their own needs would harm their relationships with others. Through a subsequent survey (N=320), we reveal how these two perspectives impact user behavior across four social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter). Users who viewed social media as a pragmatic tool indeed used privacy features more. On the other hand, users who focused on how privacy can serve as a relational hindrance avoided using these features and, instead, prioritized social engagement and took a more indirect approach to protecting their privacy. Furthermore, the results show how these perspectives vary by individual rather than by privacy feature. These findings demonstrate the need to consider different perspectives towards social media and privacy when trying to understand and design for user behavior.

The purpose of our research is to direct more attention to two relationship privacy boundary strategies: connection avoidance (i.e., rejecting friend/follower requests) and connection termination (i.e., removing existing friends/followers). A survey study was conducted with 222 college students that examined how participants regulated these boundaries with others versus how they perceived others who regulated these boundaries with them ("self" vs. "other") on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Participants reported using relationship avoidance and termination strategies more than they perceived others using these strategies against them. Overall, there were minimal impacts reported in terms of relationship changes due to others avoiding and terminating relationships. Site affordances partially explain these results, as none of the sites currently notify users when a friend request is denied or an existing friendship is severed.

Prior research shows that a root cause of many privacy concerns in location-sharing social media is people's desire to preserve offline relationship boundaries. Other literature recognizes lying as an everyday phenomenon that preserves such relationship boundaries by facilitating smooth social interactions. Combining these strands of research, one might hypothesize that people with a predisposition to lie would generally have lower privacy concerns since lying is a means to preserve relationship boundaries. We tested this hypothesis using structural equation modeling on data from a survey administered nationwide (N=1532), and found that for location-sharing, people with a high propensity to lie actually have increased boundary preservation concerns as well as increased privacy concerns. We explain these findings using results from semi-structured interviews.

In a mixed-methods study on adoption of location-sharing social networks (LSSN), we discovered that variations in adoption and usage behavior could be explained by one's predisposition to communicate in a certain style. Specifically, we found that certain individuals prefer a communication style we call FYI (For Your Information). FYI communicators like to infer availability and to keep in touch with others without having to interact with them, which is the predominant style in current LSSN. Using structural equation modeling on a U.S. nationwide survey (N=1021), we show how the FYI communication style predicts the adoption of LSSN while also showing a negative effect on one's desire to call someone on the phone. Moreover, we find that as age increases, FYI preference significantly decreases. In a follow-on survey (N=180), we refine the FYI construct and show that it affects users' level of disclosure and participation in social media. Furthermore, we show that it completely mediates the effect of certain Big-5 personality traits on social media participation and LSSN usage. The results suggest that to cater to a wider segment of the population, LSSN (and arguably any social media) should support an active communication style.

Recent privacy controversies surrounding social networking sites demonstrate that the mere availability of settings is not enough for effective privacy management. We investigated whether the aggregated privacy choices of one's social circle might guide users in making informed privacy decisions. We conducted an experiment in which users specified preferences for six privacy-relevant settings in Instant Messaging. In one condition, users were provided with information indicating the privacy preferences of the majority of their ``buddies." Our results suggest that while this information did influence user choices, the effect was secondary to that of the ``privacy-sensitivity" of the system feature controlled by the particular setting. Frequency of IM usage was also associated with privacy choices. The experiment data coupled with user comments suggest several usability improvements in interfaces for specifying privacy preferences.