Poster: A User Study of WhatsApp Privacy Settings Among Arab Users

Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) applications (apps) such as WhatsApp Messenger enable easy communication and open new issues of information control and privacy management. We invesigate WhatsApp to understand how Arab people manage their privacy on MIM apps. We find that WhatsApp’s design decisions around adding contacts result in privacy issues of information leakage and unwanted contact through the app. Keywords—Privacy; WhatsApp; Mobile Instant Messaging; Usability; User Study; Survey; Arab