Paper ID: 2112.10699

Mind-proofing Your Phone: Navigating the Digital Minefield with GreaseTerminator

Siddhartha Datta, Konrad Kollnig, Nigel Shadbolt

Digital harms are widespread in the mobile ecosystem. As these devices gain ever more prominence in our daily lives, so too increases the potential for malicious attacks against individuals. The last line of defense against a range of digital harms - including digital distraction, political polarisation through hate speech, and children being exposed to damaging material - is the user interface. This work introduces GreaseTerminator to enable researchers to develop, deploy, and test interventions against these harms with end-users. We demonstrate the ease of intervention development and deployment, as well as the broad range of harms potentially covered with GreaseTerminator in five in-depth case studies.

Submitted: Dec 20, 2021