Privacy threats in intimate relationships

            Privacy is important to a lot of people’s lives. In the world that we live in today technology is something that is widely used in every aspect of our lives in some form. Trust is also an important factor in both cyber-security and in relationships. Levy and Schneier’s hypothesis goes into the question of how much privacy is compromised based off of close relationships of certain individuals and how we can prevent these issues. It starts off in the introduction on how “intimate threats” are not being taken seriously or not given too much attention in security even though these individuals are the highest threat for a breach in privacy (Levy and Schneier). In society people do not see this as too much of an invasion of privacy due to the closeness of the individuals. For example, it is seen as normal and commonplace for parents to track and monitor their kids’ phones and a little less normal but not seen as too much of an issue with partners doing the same thing (Levy and Schneier).

            Next the article goes into the types of intimate attackers and victims and uses examples (Levy and Schneier). Parents and minor children go into my example earlier where the adults monitor their kids from infancy through adolescence (Levy and Schneier). This part of the intimate attackers makes sense. Although it is an invasion of privacy, they are the child’s parents and should have the right to monitor what they are doing online. I say this because they are legally responsible for their children’s action online. The article does make a good point in trying to define essential parenting with invasion of privacy going back to having a trusting relationship with their child (Levy and Schneier). On the other side of things some parents will unfortunately use their kids’ names and identities to take advantage of credit opportunities possibly messing it up for them later in life (Levy and Schneier). The next one is one that makes sense in a standpoint of taking advantage of people. That happens to be adult children and elderly parents along with caregivers or dependents of them (Levy and Schneier). Elderly people are usually monitored for their own safety and to make sure they are being neglected by caretakers but their also can be privacy concerns as well (Levy and Schneier).  Although it is more based off an individual thing, some people monitor more than they should with elderly people and it is possible that they have sensitive information online that can be taken advantage of by people who are close to them whether it is family or caretakers that monitor them (Levy and Schneier). The last type of threat happens to be friends. Friends can be just as much a threat of privacy as the others, but it tends not to be as much of an issue due to not being as intimate as family of course. Usually this is more an issue between tweens and young adults (Levy and Schneier).

Next the article talks about features or motives on why intimate threats happen (Levy and Schneier).  Emotions are a big part of how human psychology works in that people will go for what can benefit them and who they care about the most even if unethical (Levy and Schneier). An example was that possibly in an abusive relationship the attacker looks for power and along with physical power they want to control every aspect of the victim’s life (Levy and Schneier). This is a big issue in romantic relationships. As humans become older, they will rely on help more and along with that can result in privacy being compromised (Levy and Schneier). Same thing happens when in a relationship with someone. The biggest one to me was that despite certain things like banks asking for information that only the victim would know, someone close to them such as a partner could take advantage of the information given to them (Levy and Schneier). In order to prevent these things from happening a graph with implications was made to distinguish design implications and common intimate threat features. (Levy and Schneier). The first one describes being aware of all of the privacy threats while at the same time knowing how each relationship works regarding the threat and knowing how to handle it (Levy and Schneier). The other implications also have to do with recognizing different aspects of privacy going from social media and the internet to regular households (Levy and Schneier). A big thing that has come of any type of cyber threat is victimization. Victims in this case regarding intimate relationships is so much worse. If the people closest to an individual cannot be trusted, then nobody can for that person. Victimization all has to do with perception and prior experience and examples such as the ones above can cause a lot of psychological issues for people regarding the cyber world and privacy in general.

In the conclusion, after going over examples such as surveys and applications used along with graphs, it was said that acknowledging the fact that intimate threats are a thing does in fact help the situation as a whole (Levy and Schneier). There really is no way to prevent people completely from sharing their information, especially with loved ones, but if we can recognize the threats and be a little bit more conservative with our information, we can prevent more invasions of privacy while still being safe (Levy and Schneier).

Works Cited

Levy, Karen and Bruce Schneier. “Privacy threats in intimiate relationship.” Jounral of Cybersecurity (2020): 1-13.