Social Coding Platforms (SCPs) like GitHub have become central to modern software engineering thanks to their collaborative and version-control features. Like in mainstream Online Social Networks (OSNs) such as Facebook, users of SCPs are subjected to privacy attacks and threats given the high amounts of personal and project-related data available in their profiles and software repositories. However, unlike in OSNs, the privacy concerns and practices of SCP users have not been extensively explored nor documented in the current literature. In this work, we present the preliminary results of an online survey (N=105) addressing developers' concerns and perceptions about privacy threats steaming from SCPs. Our results suggest that, although users express concern about social and organisational privacy threats, they often feel safe sharing personal and project-related information on these platforms. Moreover, attacks targeting the inference of sensitive attributes are considered more likely than those seeking to re-identify source-code contributors. Based on these findings, we propose a set of recommendations for future investigations addressing privacy and identity management in SCPs.

翻译：社交编码平台（如GitHub）凭借其协作与版本控制功能，已成为现代软件工程的核心。与主流在线社交网络（如Facebook）类似，社交编码平台的用户因其个人资料与软件仓库中包含大量个人及项目相关数据，面临隐私攻击与威胁。然而，不同于在线社交网络，当前文献中尚未广泛探讨或记录社交编码平台用户的隐私关注与实践。本研究基于一项在线调查（样本量N=105）的初步结果，探讨开发者对社交编码平台隐私威胁的关切与认知。研究结果表明，尽管用户表达了对社交及组织层面隐私威胁的担忧，但他们往往倾向于在这些平台上安全地分享个人及项目相关信息。此外，相较于试图重新识别源代码贡献者的攻击，针对敏感属性推断的攻击被认为更可能发生。基于这些发现，我们提出了一系列建议，以指导未来针对社交编码平台中隐私与身份管理问题的研究。