Some thoughts about my outlook calendar

My thinking on this is perhaps more mundane, but I'm fascinated by the information that lives on my outlook calendar. This calendar is accessible to a number of individuals across the university and so among other things, it tells senior staff and colleagues what I'm up to. I don't explicitly tell lies on my calendar, but I am capable of duplicity ... so that if, for example, a lengthy meeting is subsequently cancelled, I'm quite likely to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that I can get on with work, but that others will not be interrupting me. Of course I can block out time on my calendar (as I do with big 'keep free' signs), but somehow the secret spaces that develop from cancelled events etc seem more precious to me!

What am I doing now?

I'm going to argue that what I'm doing right now (as you read this) is an online secret. (It's not, just for the record, anything incriminating. Or at least probably not :) ).

Chances are pretty good that I'm not far from my computer, so you may be able to get some cues about what I'm doing from it. If I'm on your AIM, MSN or Skype buddy list, that'll tell you if I've used my keyboard recently. Google's chat app might tell you the same thing, and I may also have recently updated my status line there. If I'm teaching class on certain days and you're bored enough to watch my Yahoo live channel, you might be able to see video of what I'm doing. Or possibly a still image of what I was doing the last time I logged in. And my Facebook status might also provide you with some information.

Even with all of that, though, you'd have a hard time guessing what I'm doing right now. Care to try? And that's probably a good thing. I don't know most of you and there's little reason for you to have this information.

There may be times, though, when I do want you to know what I'm doing. Or at least have enough information to let you see that I have a minute to chat or that I'm scrambling toward the CSCW deadline and don't want to talk about anything not related to that. And there may be times when I want you to think I'm scrambling toward the CSCW deadline, but am actually out drinking with my friends (possibly even complaining about what a lousy co-author you are :) ).

These are truths, secrets and lies related to interpersonal awareness. And they're my motivation for participating in this workshop.

An IM infatuation Turned to Romance. Then the Truth Came Out

So, the majority of lies, including those online, seem to be pretty small and non-consequential. But, every once and a while we hear of incredible and terrible ones. This article from WIRED about an online romance gone bad is one of these - in the end it turns out that the only person involved that wasn't lying about their realspace identity was the one who ended up dead. There's a moral here.

Gold Sellers Hold Account Hostage -- Really?

WoW Insider, a prominent World of Warcraft blog, recently reported on a story of a player whose World of Warcraft account was hacked and held hostage by gold sellers. A short snippet from the original article explains the situation.

As John tells us, the guild was gathering around for another regular and fun day of game play. Things were going fine until all of the sudden one of their guild mates logged on and started acting weird. This was the first sign something was wrong. The second was when the people playing the guild mate's account started demanding gold in return for returning the character to the owner.

The gold sellers effectively held the account hostage until the guild ponnied up the ransom. John doesn't tell us if they complied, so we'll all have to guess. What is interesting here is the tactics employed by the gold spammers. If they are actually doing this, then they have gotten quite desperate in their attempts to get easy and quick gold.

To me, the most amazing part of this story is that everyone banded behind John and believed that his account was hacked. What if John was deceiving his entire guild for great personal gain? Why would gold sellers be willing to invest so much personal time and risk into a hostage situation that is likely to end in little reward? A phone call to Warcraft customer service would shut this situation down in a few minutes. The article claims that gold sellers are getting desparate, but the price of Warcraft gold on the grey markets has been consistent for months. In the past gold sellers have resorted to raising prices when their gold supply diminishes (or when demand increases). I doubt the gold seller situation has changed so drastically that they're resorting to extreme hostage situations.

Did John deceive his guildmates? How can his colleagues tell if they're being deceived? If John deceived guildmates, why was it so easy to get dozens of people to support him with such minimal effort? These are the types of questions I would like to flesh out during the workshop.

Preferred outcomes from workshop?

We (the organizers) are beginning to think about ways ahead after the workshop. One option is to have an edited book of with chapters by the position paper authors...we've already begun initial discussions with one publisher. The other option is to push for a special issue of a journal (like, for instance, IJHCS). There are plusses and negatives for each route - the advantage of a book is that there is more support (e.g. for editing, indexing), and it is more likely to be read (and cited) and used in class. But, it also takes quite a long time to come out, and before you know it there's a $40 charge added to it. Special issues of journals can take just as long to come out, although there's the added academic kudos (but often fewer readers...)

Do you have a preference - edited book or special issue? And why....

Game of on-line buying

When planning my trip to Florence I found out that RyanAir, one of those cheap European airlines, flies between Eindhoven, NL (where I live) and Pisa (80 km from Florence) and it offers rather inexpensive tickets - about 60 Euro both ways. Sounds good? Obviously if something sounds too good to be true it probably is;)))) The fact that airport taxes are always hidden is already common knowledge. I was also not that shocked seeing additional charge for use of a credit card for my payment. But I was really surprised to see that not only I can take no more than 15 kg luggage (which is not so much of a problem) but also that I have to pay additional 26 Euro if I want to check my luggage in. And thinking of all those restrictions regarding liquid transportation it is sure money for the airlines neatly hidden deep into the booking process only after you really made up your mind about purchasing the ticket. On the top of all that RyanAir insists on paying additional money for travel insurance 'threatening' that if something happens to the plane and you don't have their insurance they cannot be made liable. So, my initial 60-euro ticket was nicely getting the price of about 200-euro by the time I got to the end of the booking procedure.

There are some discussions going on in the European Union commissions regarding new policies prohibiting hiding any additional charges of the flight tickets. It seems like the companies like RyanAir start smelling the possible consequences of those discussions and run for last quick shot of easy money. Why easy? I guess that if you have already made up your mind about taking that particular flight you are very likely to decide to pay the additional 20 - 30 Euro just to avoid the hustle of searching for a new connection and possibly replanning your trip. It is also very likely that this ticket is still the cheapest possible option anyway. But such an unfair process of finding out what the real price of the ticket is makes one feel cheated, pretty badly cheated, to be honest. The sequential booking process easily allows for such a trick - you need invest time to go from one page to the other and at the end of this process you are too tired to fight the system. Cheap airlines is just one example of such "ambiguous" procedures that make people feel mistreated. Would you think of similar examples (like small print policies) making a straightforward buying process feel like a game which rules are known only to guys who made them?

Inadvertent revelations

I study plausible deniability, when we deliberately make our actions ambiguous in such a way so that other people can't know our true motivations for doing something. How do we design software systems to support or deny certain types of plausible deniability? What do people choose to hide and how do people use software to do it?

Plausible deniability is a fascinating topic but not one very conducive to research because if people don't want to reveal their intentions to anyone, they definitely don't want to reveal it to researchers. However, sometimes people can slip up and reveal more than they intend to, especially if their understanding of how software works is at odds with reality.

On Facebook, people can write notes and "tag" certain friends to appear alongside the note. When viewing the notes, the order which people appear on the tagged friends list is the order in which they were added. They shouldn't be, and nobody is aware they are, but thats how the system was programmed. Looking at the order in which people are tagged reveals some fascinating internal motivations. In many cases, 2 or 3 people will be tagged first, then the rest of the list will proceed in alphabetical order of last name. Those 2 or 3 people, they were the ones who the author really want to read the note, but they didn't want those people to know they were the ones the note was intended for. So how do you plausibly deny this? You go back through your friends list and add a whole bunch of other people and now your intention is hidden. Except, in this case it wasn't, the system was not well designed for plausible deniability.

The question I want to ask is, as researchers, how do we go ahead and study plausible deniability? Once you become aware of it, you start to see plausible deniability everywhere. It's such an important part of normal human interaction that we must account for it in software design. But the frustrating thing is that plausible deniability is, well... plausible. They *could* not want to pretend not to have seen your email and claim the spam filter ate it, or maybe the spam filter really did eat it. It's only when plausible deniability goes wrong that you can conclusively proves that it exists. So what is a poor researcher to do?

An example I use in class...

This is an example of a discussion about a product that raises issues about the authenticity of the author...and also how quickly any posting viewed as inauthentic is challenged....from memory, it came from a gadget discussion site..

XXXXX @ Nov 14th 2006 3:22PM

My girlfriend and I both bought zunes today at Best Buy. After we installed the software (worked flawlessy on xp pro on both our notebooks). We started downloading the crap out of the marketplace with our subscriptions. I just met her a hour ago at a coffee shop and we sent each other some songs to test everything out. A bunch of people kept asking us what we were using and what the hell we were doing. It was pretty cool. I am not a big fan of the 3 x 3 plan, but if you have the subscription package on marketplace, its not a big deal at all since all songs are free (just your $15 fee per month)

XXX @ Nov 14th 2006 4:10PM

I don't wanna hate the Zune. Really, I don't. Even still, you can't tell me someone other than Bill Gates is signing your paycheck. I don't believe one word of your post.

XXX @ Nov 14th 2006 7:54PM

XX, ummm, so if someone has a good experience with a Zune, they must be lying and being paid by MS? Come on, it is possible, and probably likely, for consumers to have a positive experience.

XXXX @ Nov 14th 2006 10:08PM

Hmmm....

Smells funny. Me thinks you are working in Redmond alot these days. Something smells brown and its not your Zune my friend.

Welcome

Welcome to the Secrets and Lies CHI 2008 Blog.

We'll be posting examples of secrets and lies (and "not sure's") here in preparation for the workshop.

Here is the Secret and Lies homepage where you can view the invited papers and authors.

--Adam, Jeff and Pamela