Abstract

Contemporary mobile messaging provides rich text and multimedia functionality leaving detailed trails of sensitive user information that can span long periods of time. Allowing users to manage the privacy implications both on the sender and the receiver side can help to increase confidence in the use of communication applications. In October 2017, one of the mobile messengers with the largest user base, WhatsApp, introduced a feature to delete past messages from communication, both from the sender’s and the recipient’s devices. In this article, we compare the deletion features of 17 popular messaging applications. Implementations of these features widely differ across the applications we examined. We further report on a study with 125 participants conducted in a between-subjects design. We explore users’ preferences for deleting mobile messages, and we investigate how well they comprehend this functionality as implemented in popular messaging applications. We found statistically significant differences in users’ understanding of message deletion between our three test conditions, comprising WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Skype. Eighty percent of participants in the WhatsApp condition could correctly assess the effects of deleting messages, compared to only 49% in the Skype condition. In addition, we provide insights into qualitative feedback received from our participants. Our findings indicate that message deletion is seen as a potentially useful feature that users may be able to use in different ways, including editing messages. Furthermore, users can more precisely estimate the capabilities of a deletion function when its effects are transparently explained in the application’s user interface.

中文翻译：

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探索用户对移动即时消息应用程序中删除的看法

摘要

当代的移动消息传递提供了丰富的文本和多媒体功能，留下了可能跨越很长时间的敏感用户信息的详细痕迹。允许用户在发送方和接收方都管理隐私隐含性，可以帮助增加使用通信应用程序的信心。2017年10月，拥有最大用户群的移动通讯程序之一WhatsApp引入了一项功能，可以删除发件人和收件人设备中通信中的过去消息。在本文中，我们比较了17种流行消息传递应用程序的删除功能。在我们检查的应用程序中，这些功能的实现差异很大。我们进一步报告了一项在受试者之间进行的设计，共有125名参与者参加。我们探讨了用户删除移动消息的偏好，并且我们调查了他们对这种功能的理解程度，这些功能已在流行的消息传递应用程序中实现。我们发现，在三个测试条件（包括WhatsApp，Facebook Messenger和Skype）之间，用户对邮件删除的理解在统计上存在显着差异。在WhatsApp条件下，有80％的参与者可以正确评估删除消息的效果，而在Skype条件下，只有49％的参与者可以正确评估删除消息的效果。此外，我们提供从参与者那里获得的定性反馈的见解。我们的发现表明，消息删除被视为用户可能能够以不同方式使用的潜在有用功能，包括编辑消息。此外，