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In this research proposal, we outline our plans to examine the characteristics and affordances of ad transparency systems provided by 22 online platforms. We outline a user study designed to evaluate the usability of eight of these systems by studying the actions and behaviors each system enables, as well as users' understanding of these transparency systems. 

Although researchers have characterized the bug-bounty ecosystem from the point of view of platforms and programs, minimal effort has been made to understand the perspectives of the main workers: bug hunters. To improve bug bounties, it is important to understand hunters’ motivating factors, challenges, and overall benefits. We address this research gap with three studies: identifying key factors through a free listing survey (n=56), rating each factor’s importance with a larger-scale factor-rating survey (n=159), and conducting semi-structured interviews to uncover details (n=24). Of 54 factors that bug hunters listed, we find that rewards and learning opportunities are the most important benefits. Further, we find scope to be the top differentiator between programs. Surprisingly, we find earning reputation to be one of the least important motivators for hunters. Of the challenges we identify, communication problems, such as unresponsiveness and disputes, are the most substantial. We present recommendations to make the bug-bounty ecosystem accommodating to more bug hunters and ultimately increase participation in an underutilized market. 

Many studies of mobile security and privacy are, for simplicity, limited to either only Android users or only iOS users. However, it is not clear whether there are systematic differences in the privacy and security knowledge or preferences of users who select these two platforms. Understanding these differences could provide important context about the generalizability of research results. This paper reports on a survey (n=493) with a demographically diverse sample of U.S. Android and iOS users. We compare users of these platforms using validated privacy and security scales (IUIPC-8 and SA-6) as well as previously deployed attitudinal and knowledge questions from Pew Research Center. As a secondary analysis, we also investigate potential differences among users of different smart-speaker platforms, including Amazon Echo and Google Home. We find no significant differences in privacy attitudes of different platform users, but we do find that Android users have more technology knowledge than iOS users. In addition, we find evidence (via comparison with Pew data) that Prolific participants have more technology knowledge than the general U.S. population.