I was never a STEM-oriented person. I like to think it was because I had talent in another subject that took my attention away from STEM, but it was more likely due to the humbling experience of going to an academically challenging high school that turned my love for science and math into the stress of finishing mountains of homework and fear of failing back-to-back assessments. I couldn’t picture myself pursuing a career in STEM when I obviously wasn’t good at it … I bounced from subject to subject, taking various non-STEM-related classes to find my interest.

The goal of my research is to find out the effects of showing different people various privacy suggestions in a Facebook-like system. In theory, this understanding could provide tools that allow users who want different amounts of privacy to achieve it conveniently. To adapt to users, however, one needs a model of the users. We picked Privacy Profiles, a previously established user model. Privacy Profiles basically categorize users of a social network based on the privacy features they use and are aware of.