  It is common practice for researchers to join public WhatsApp chats and
scrape their contents for analysis. However, research shows collecting data
this way contradicts user expectations and preferences, even if the data is
effectively public. To overcome these issues, we outline design considerations
for collecting WhatsApp chat data with improved user privacy by heightening
user control and oversight of data collection and taking care to minimize the
data researchers collect and process off a user's device. We refer to these
design principles as User-Centered Data Sharing (UCDS). To evaluate our UCDS
principles, we implemented a mobile application representing one possible
instance of these improved data collection techniques and evaluated the
viability of using the app to collect WhatsApp chat data. Second, we surveyed
WhatsApp users to gather user perceptions on common existing WhatsApp data
collection methods as well as UCDS methods. Our results show that we were able
to glean similar informative insights into WhatsApp chats using UCDS principles
in our prototype app to common, less privacy-preserving methods. Our survey
showed that methods following the UCDS principles are preferred by users
because they offered users more control over the data collection process.
Future user studies could further expand upon UCDS principles to overcome
complications of researcher-to-group communication in research on WhatsApp
chats and evaluate these principles in other data sharing contexts.
