Understanding Privacy Decisions of Homeworkers During Video Conferences.

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of people have been forced to work from home. Particularly during video conferences, workers basically invite their colleagues, co-workers and supervisors into their homes, sacrificing portions of their privacy in the process. In this paper, we investigate which home-related and work-related factors are perceived as relevant for privacy. We asked participants to indicate their preferences for videoconferencing settings in various scenarios and also asked about their personal experiences. The results show that power distance plays a role, but that group size and familiarity with other group members are more decisive factors. We discuss implications of our findings in terms of user awareness and the benefits of different context-based default settings for videoconferencing privacy settings.