Privacy preservation in interaction history on integrated development environments

Abstract

The interaction history in a software development environment allows us to analyze how developers change source code and how they use tools on the integrated development environment. Sharing the interaction history with tool providers increases the chances that developers obtain better tools. However, the interaction history sometimes contains privacy-sensitive information, which is an obstacle in collecting and using the interaction history. As an attempt to tackle this issue, this paper proposes a technique to replace sensitive text in a recorded interaction history. This paper describes the proposed technique, its current implementation, the results of a preliminary survey on how potential privacy-sensitive information exists in recorded interaction histories, and how privacy issues in sharing interaction histories can be ameliorated.