Economics Department, Internal Seminars, 2020
15/10/2020 - Arina Nikandrova: " Privacy Protection: When Does Hiding in Plain Sight Work? " Abstract: We study a model where a hider aims to prevent a seeker from learning sensitive information about her. The hider can pre-commit to ex ante level of protection for sensitive information. We show that when full protection of sensitive information is not feasible, the hider may optimally choose to hide sensitive information in plain sight, that is, protect it less than non-sensitive information, in hope that the seeker would quickly give up the search for the hider's information because he would think that, had there been anything sensitive to uncover, he would have found it already. The optimal protection level for sensitive information is increasing in the exogenous protection level for non-sensitive information, thus making these two types of protection complementary. In addition, we extend the model by allowing the hider to control the number of seekers. Then open a