Blur Filtration Fails to Preserve Privacy for Home-Based Video Conferencing

摘要

Always-on video provides rich awareness for distance-separated coworkers. Yet video can threaten privacy, especially when it captures telecommuters working at home. We evaluated video blurring, an image masking method long touted to balance privacy and awareness. Results show that video blurring is unable to balance privacy with awareness for risky situations. Reactions by participants suggest that other popular image masking techniques will be problematic as well. The design implication is that image masking techniques will not suffice for privacy protection in video-based telecommuting situations. Other context-aware privacy-protecting strategies are required, as illustrated in our prototype context-aware home media space.