LSE ignites privacy settings project

The London School of Economics (LSE) is undertaking an identity management project to examine how 10,000 staff and students manage their privacy.

The £500,000 Flame project will give LSE students and staff access to external online learning services with access privileges correlated to the amount of private information users are willing to divulge.

The study will examine how users choose to exercise control over their digital privacy, said project manager John Paschoud.

“We’re trying to find out how much people care about keeping their information private, and how they will adjust default privacy settings to reflect this,” he said.

As well as giving users controls over the privacy settings, the project will measure awareness and concern about privacy issues through online questionnaires.

Paschoud expects the majority of students to accept the default settings. “It seems highly likely that people will trust the institution to manage their information for them,” he said.

The project is due to finish by March 2009.