Towards implicit contextual integrity

Many real incidents demonstrate that users of Online Social Networks need mechanisms that help them manage their interactions by increasing the awareness of the different contexts that coexist in Online Social Networks and preventing users from exchanging inappropriate information in those contexts or disseminating sensitive information from some contexts to others. Contextual integrity is a privacy theory that expresses the appropriateness of information sharing based on the contexts in which this information is to be shared. Computational models of Contextual Integrity assume the existence of well-defined contexts, in which individuals enact pre-defined roles and information sharing is governed by an explicit set of norms. However, contexts in Online Social Networks are known to be implicit, unknown a priori and ever changing; users’ relationships are constantly evolving; and the norms for information sharing are implicit. This makes current Contextual Integrity models not suitable for Online Social Networks. This position paper highlights the limitations of current research to tackle the problem of exchanging inappropriate information and undesired dissemination of information and outlines the desiderata for a new vision that we call Implicit Contextual Integrity