“Create an environment that protects women, rather than selling anxiety!”: Participatory Threat Modelling with Chinese Young Women Living Alone

Paper Title

“Create an environment that protects women, rather than selling anxiety!”: Participatory Threat Modelling with Chinese Young Women Living Alone

Publication Info

• Topic area: Privacy, security, and safety (PSS) risks for young women living alone in China.
• Keywords: Privacy, security, safety, smart homes, digital harassment, surveillance, deepfakes, participatory threat modeling, gendered risks, feminist HCI.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing research on privacy, security, and safety (PSS) risks often overlooks the unique sociotechnical and cultural context of Chinese young women living alone (YWLA). Prior studies are predominantly Western-centric and fail to address the intersection of gendered vulnerabilities, smart home technologies, and digital threats in non-Western settings.
• Significance: With approximately 40 million YWLA in China, this demographic faces heightened risks such as digitally facilitated physical violence, scams, and pervasive surveillance. These risks are compounded by limited institutional protections and patriarchal norms, making it critical to understand and address their unique safety concerns.
• Motivation and related work: Prior studies have explored gendered PSS risks, such as intimate partner surveillance and deepfake harassment, but they lack a human-centered threat model grounded in the lived experiences of non-Western populations. This paper builds on feminist HCI and threat modeling literature to address this gap.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A human-centered threat model developed through Participatory Threat Modeling (PTM) workshops with Chinese YWLA. The study also produced a tailored Privacy, Security, and Safety (PSS) guidebook.
• Novelty:
  1. Development of a human-centered threat model specific to Chinese YWLA, highlighting interconnected threats such as digitally facilitated violence, scams, and surveillance.
  2. Identification of four double-edged mitigation strategies: smart home devices, boundary management, cultural practices, and social media engagement.
  3. Integration of Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory to analyze privacy ownership and boundary turbulence.
  4. Creation of an open-access PSS guidebook tailored to the lived experiences of Chinese YWLA.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  1. Conducted six PTM workshops with 33 participants, focusing on threat perceptions, mitigation strategies, and desired interventions.
  2. Analyzed workshop transcripts using reflexive thematic analysis to identify key themes and patterns.
  3. Iteratively developed and refined a PSS guidebook based on participant feedback.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  1. Identified three primary threats: digitally facilitated physical violence (e.g., address leakage via platforms), digital harassment and scams (e.g., deepfake fraud targeting parents), and multi-scalar surveillance (e.g., hidden cameras, state biometric systems).
  2. Documented four mitigation strategies: smart home devices as "digital guardians," performing masculinity, cultural practices (e.g., talismans), and social media engagement.
  3. Highlighted the double-edged nature of these strategies, which often redistribute rather than eliminate risks.
• Advantage over baselines: The study extends prior work by providing an empirically grounded, culturally specific threat model and actionable recommendations tailored to Chinese YWLA, moving beyond Western-centric assumptions.
• Experiments / evaluation: Conducted six workshops (n=33) with diverse participants, followed by iterative development and participant feedback on the PSS guidebook. Data was analyzed using thematic coding and CPM theory.
• Limitations and future work:
  1. Reliance on self-reported data may introduce social desirability bias.
  2. Cross-sectional design limits assessment of longitudinal changes in risk perceptions.
  3. Future work could explore causal links between device-specific data leaks and harms, and test the guidebook's long-term effectiveness.

Summary

This study developed a human-centered threat model for Chinese young women living alone (YWLA), identifying interconnected threats such as digitally facilitated violence, scams, and surveillance. It documented four double-edged mitigation strategies and integrated Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory to analyze privacy boundary dynamics. The findings informed the creation of an open-access PSS guidebook tailored to YWLA, offering practical advice and addressing cultural and technological contexts. The study contributes to feminist HCI and privacy literature by providing actionable recommendations for design, governance, and education to enhance PSS for YWLA in China.