The Role of Privacy Guarantees in Voluntary Donation of Private Health Data for Altruistic Goals
Ruizhe Wang
Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2026 · Day 3 · Covert Sensing
This user study examines whether presenting **privacy protection guarantees** (anonymization, access control, data expiration, purpose restriction) and **auditing guarantees** (expert auditing, self-auditing) increases people's willingness to donate their medical data for research. Surveying **494 US-based participants**, the researchers found a counterintuitive result: **presenting privacy protections alone does not significantly increase donation willingness**. Instead, **non-privacy factors** -- such as whether the collecting entity is nonprofit or for-profit, the participant's prior donation history, and general trust levels -- dominate the decision. Auditing guarantees show promise for building trust, even for for-profit entities, but participants struggle to understand what cryptographic auditing means in practice.
AI review
A user study about health data donation willingness that finds privacy protections don't increase donation rates. While methodologically sound, this is a social science survey with no technical security content -- no attacks, no defenses, no tools, no novel techniques. The finding that 'presenting protections doesn't matter' is interesting for policy but irrelevant for anyone doing security work.