Karen Sowon, an assistant professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, was part of a group of researchers who were recently honored with the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security Privacy Award by the International Association of Privacy Professionals.
Sowon and colleagues from George Washington University, Carnegie Mellon, Strathmore, and Carnegie Mellon University-Africa presented “Design and Evaluation of Privacy-Preserving Protocols for Agent-Facilitated Mobile Money Services in Kenya,” which designed alternative protocols for Mobile Money (MoMo).
“Receiving this award was both exciting and deeply meaningful,” Sowon said. “It is not only a personal honor but also a recognition of the urgent need for technology solutions that truly serve people in the majority world. Too often, communities in Africa and elsewhere bear the brunt of technological harms—especially around privacy and security. This award affirms that research focused on equity, inclusion, and user protection matters, and it motivates me to continue pursuing solutions that ensure technology benefits everyone, not just a privileged few.”
MoMo is a technology that allows users to complete financial transactions using a mobile phone without requiring a bank account, which is a common method for processing financial transactions in Africa and other developing regions. Sowon and her group aimed to protect users’ privacy while redirecting the flow of sensitive information.
“Mobile money has become the backbone of financial inclusion in Africa, with Kenya leading the way through platforms like M-Pesa—so much so that the number of mobile money accounts there actually exceeds the population,” Sowon said. “We set out to design alternative transaction workflows that could protect user privacy without compromising security or usability.”
The work was based on an earlier study that discovered that although users valued mobile money, many worried about their privacy and often resorted to workarounds that unintentionally created new risks.
The researchers interviewed 32 users and 15 agents in Kenya and found that they preferred the alternative protocols thanks to convenient and efficient verification using biometrics, while also improving privacy.
“Our research demonstrates that privacy and security do not have to be trade-offs,” Sowon said. “We developed new mobile money workflows that are both secure and private while remaining easy to use—even on the basic mobile phones that many people in Africa still rely on.
The IAPP SOUPS Privacy Award recognizes outstanding research that advances the field of usable privacy and security and is awarded to the best paper at the SOUPS conference.