I just want your anonymized contacts! benefits and education in security & privacy research

Does participating in privacy research benefit the participant; if so, under what conditions? How do we measure the risk and benefit of participation of privacy and security research? In this paper we describe an experiment in which we requested anonymized information in the form of hashed contacts lists. The response to the request brought forward not only another example of the privacy paradox (people give away contacts for applications but would not sell them anonymized) but also brought forward the question of research as education and awareness. After evaluation our interactions, we developed a proposal for determining if there is a benefit to participating in privacy research. Is there a benefit in privacy awareness or increased security practices for participants in privacy and security research? We sketch a coordinated cross-university study to meet three goals: implement a practical collaborative partnership; investigate the value of security research for participants in terms of education; and enable evaluation of distinct benefit assessments.