“Sharing Is Caring:” Australian Self-Trackers' Concepts and Practices of Personal Data Sharing and Privacy

Abstract

Self-tracking technologies and practices offer ways of generating vast reams of personal details, raising questions about how these data are revealed or exposed to others. In this article, I report on findings from an interview-based study of long-term Australian self-trackers who were collecting and reviewing personal information about their bodies and other aspects of their everyday lives. The discussion focuses on the participants' understandings and practices related to sharing their personal data and to data privacy. The contextual elements of self-tracked sharing and privacy concerns were evident in the participants' accounts and were strongly related to ideas about why and how these details should be accessed by others. Sharing personal information from self-tracking was largely viewed as an intimate social experience. The value of self-tracked data to contribute to close face-to-face relationships was recognized and related aspects of social privacy were identified. However, most participants did not consider the possibilities that their personal information could be distributed well-beyond these relationships by third parties for commercial purposes (or what has been termed “institutional privacy”). These findings contribute to a more-than-digital approach to personal data sharing and privacy practices that recognizes the interplay between digital and non-digital practices and contexts. They also highlight the relational and social dimensions of self-tracking and concepts of data privacy.

Privacy Personas for IoT-Based Health Research: A Privacy Calculus Approach

“…This confirms what was found in Lupton ( 53 ) where trust dimensions were identified as closely associated with sharing self-tracked data. In their study, context stood out as strongly linked with the willingness to share, as personal information was commonly viewed as an intimate social experience.…”

‘Friendly’ and ‘noisy surveillance’ through MapMyRun during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…As such, for people like Lucy, online relationships via self-tracking apps augment offline relationships, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than opening up to surveillance from strangers. This is similar to Lupton’s (2021) argument that when people do share their data it is often with people who they have an established face-to-face relationship and thus offers an example of what Levy (2015) terms intimate surveillance. Lucy only sharing her data with people she has close offline relationships with can be seen as an example of Robinson’s understanding of ‘power as friendship’, which operates based on relationships of trust, perhaps more so in the example of self-tracking where hierarchical power relations are less present than they are in the context of Robinson’s research.…”

“…Nine women and six men participated and the sample was limited to the global North. The participant group was not selected to be representative, although I recognise that the situatedness of the participant’s experiences may have impacted the research findings as members of different groups may have different experiences to relay about self-tracking ( Lupton, 2021 ). Whilst this paper is limited to discussion of people’s experiences in the UK and USA, self-tracking is not limited to the global North, see for example Crawley’s (2021) research on the self-tracking experiences of Ethiopian runners.…”

Tracking the trackers: Self-tracking in households as social practice

“…The study benefits from an international perspective, but shares limitations with previous research on health behaviour by focussing on those who live in locations with high levels of technological use. 1 - 4 The empirical data examines household tracking practices to investigate how different trackers contribute to new cultural and social factors affecting health across life stages. Nettleton and Green 5 propose the context of ‘social practise’ to best capture the complexities and interconnectedness of health structures and examine why practices change.…”