privacy and social in-security

Its by no means been the focus of the collaborative search workshop this week, but the issue of privacy, not surprisingly, came up in terms of what your collaborators can see about your actions. There are obvious things to be concerned about, like do you all have the same clearance, for example. But ALOT, recently, I have heard people talking not about the insecurity of the systems, but the insecurity of the users!

The example we heard here, proposed by Merrie Ringel Morris, was if you are searching for something with someone superior to yourself, and you do something stupid. what if you do not want them to see that you're being 'sub-optimal'. or if you have to look up something they said, when you are trying to make a good impression.

These are interesting privacy and 'insecurity' issues, where users still want to protect themselves. I've not seen much on it though? anybody?