Funder: EPSRC

Team: Jo Briggs (Northumbria University); Wendy Moncur (PI, University of Dundee); Leif Azzopardi (University of Strathclyde); Burkhard Schafer (University of Edinburgh); Royal Bank of Scotland; GO-Science; Bristols LLB; Crest.

Timeframe: 2019 – 2022

Cumulative Revelations is concerned with developing prototype tools that support greater employee awareness of online risks to their employer. It takes a multidisciplinary approach to investigating how the small, apparently innocuous pieces of personal information that are generated through interactions with/in networked systems over time collectively pose significant yet unanticipated harm to reputation and organisations’ operational security. Such cumulative revelations come from personal data shared intentionally, from personal data shared by others, increasingly from automatic recognition software, as well as from cross-authentication practices that favour convenience over security (e.g. signing into AirBnB via Facebook). Brought together, these data can provide unintended insights to others into, for example, an individual’s habits, work patterns and personality. The Northumbria and Strathclyde teams will work closely on the iterative design and build—and along with Dundee—the deployment and evaluation with RBS of a visualization tool that represents an individual’s ‘holistic digital footprint’, updated in real time. The aim of the technology is to promote understanding around the cumulative nature of one’s personal data and associated vulnerabilities and risks, both to oneself and also to others.