  Stack Overflow (SO) is a popular platform among developers seeking advice on
various software-related topics, including privacy and security. As for many
knowledge-sharing websites, the value of SO depends largely on users'
engagement, namely their willingness to answer, comment or post technical
questions. Still, many of these questions (including cybersecurity-related
ones) remain unanswered, putting the site's relevance and reputation into
question. Hence, it is important to understand users' participation in privacy
and security discussions to promote engagement and foster the exchange of such
expertise. Objective: Based on prior findings on online social networks, this
work elaborates on the interplay between users' engagement and their privacy
practices in SO. Particularly, it analyses developers' self-disclosure
behaviour regarding profile visibility and their involvement in discussions
related to privacy and security. Method: We followed a mixed-methods approach
by (i) analysing SO data from 1239 cybersecurity-tagged questions along with
7048 user profiles, and (ii) conducting an anonymous online survey (N=64).
Results: About 33% of the questions we retrieved had no answer, whereas more
than 50% had no accepted answer. We observed that "proactive" users tend to
disclose significantly less information in their profiles than "reactive" and
"unengaged" ones. However, no correlations were found between these engagement
categories and privacy-related constructs such as Perceived Control or General
Privacy Concerns. Implications: These findings contribute to (i) a better
understanding of developers' engagement towards privacy and security topics,
and (ii) to shape strategies promoting the exchange of cybersecurity expertise
in SO.
