Training Developers’ Privacy Awareness with Enforcement Cases
Ask the Expert ft. Shao-Yu Chu
Synopsis:
Developers' decisions about data collection, sharing, and defaults directly shape users' privacy. In practice, however, developers frequently make problematic design decisions. Even when privacy experts are available, low privacy awareness can prevent developers from recognizing issues in the first place, leaving concerns unescalated.
This talk introduces Privacy Detective, an investigation game that turns enforcement cases into hands-on training materials for developers. We'll show how we translate legal documents into game levels where players examine real-world data practices, gather evidence, and report violations with feedback grounded in the alleged violations. We'll demo the game and walk through how levels are built from public complaints. We will also share results from a between-subjects study comparing the game to a reading-based baseline that mirrors how many developers learn about privacy today.
Problem Statement:
Privacy failures in software are rarely intentional. They often happen because developers don't recognize the issue in the first place. A rich record of these failures exists in enforcement documents. We explore how to turn them into interactive training materials where developers learn through examining real data practices and identifying violations themselves.
Related Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs):
Privacy education
Game-based learning
Pre-Discussion Resources:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.09022
Guest Expert: Shao-Yu Chu
Shao-Yu is a PhD student at UC San Diego. Her research sits at the intersection of HCI and privacy. She builds tools that help developers make privacy-respecting software. Her work has been published at PoPETs and presented at USENIX PEPR.
Homepage: https://shaoyuchu.github.io/
Moderator: Kelea Ilac
Kelea Ilac is a privacy professional based in Phoenix, AZ, currently working as a Privacy & Compliance Analyst at VERO. She has been active with the IOPD since its inception, formerly serving as Secretary on the Board of Directors and currently as Administrator.