Personal information management

Abstract: Impelled by the development of technologies that facilitate collection, distribution, storage, and manipulation of personal consumer information, privacy has become a “hot” topic for policy makers. Commercial interests seek to maximize and then leverage the value of consumer information, while, at the same time, consumers voice concerns that their rights and ability to control their personal information in the marketplace are being violated. However, despite the complaints, it appears that consumers freely provide personal data. This research explores what we call the “privacy paradox” or the relationship between individuals’ intentions to disclose personal information and their actual personal information disclosure behaviors.

Abstract: Email is one oftl~ most successful computer applicmiom yet devised. Our empin~:al ct~ta show however, that althongh email was origiraUy designed as a c~nmunica/ons application, it is now used for ~tional funaions, that it was not designed for, such as tab management and persona/ afoOt/v/rig. We call this ernt~l oveHoad We demonstrate that email overload creates problems for personal information manageaa,cnt: users eden have cluttered inboxes cor~mining hundreds of n~:age~¢, incl~rling outstanding tasks, partially read documents and conversational threads. Furthermore,, user attemt:Xs to rationalise their inbox~ by ~ing are ~Ron unsuccessful, with the consequence that important rr~ges get overlooked, or "lost" in archives. We explain how em~l over/oad/ng arises and propose technical solutions to the problem.