Mobile phones, as simultaneously personal and shared technologies, complicate how partners manage digital privacy in intimate relationships. While prior research has examined device-access practices, explicit privacy-rule negotiation, and toxic practices such as surveillance, little is known about how couples manage digital privacy without direct discussion in everyday relationships. To address this gap, we ask: How is digital privacy managed nonverbally and across different media on mobile phones? Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews, we find that partners often regulate privacy practices through privacy silence -- the intentional avoidance of privacy-related conversations. We identify five motivations for leaving boundaries unspoken: perceiving privacy as unnecessary in intimacy, assuming implicit respect for boundaries, signaling trust and closeness, avoiding potential conflict or harm, and responding to broader societal and cultural expectations that discourage explicit privacy talk. We also identify a hierarchical grouping of content-specific privacy sensitivities, ranging from highly private domains such as financial data to lower-risk domains such as streaming accounts, and show how these priorities shift across relationship stages. These findings show how silence, culture, and content sensitivity shape everyday boundary-setting and underscore the relational and emotional dynamics underpinning mobile phone privacy management.

翻译：手机作为一种兼具个人性与共享性的技术，使伴侣在亲密关系中管理数字隐私的过程变得复杂。尽管先前研究已探讨设备访问实践、明确的隐私规则协商以及监控等有害行为，但对于伴侣在日常关系中如何在不直接讨论的情况下管理数字隐私，我们仍知之甚少。为填补这一空白，我们提出：数字隐私是如何通过非言语方式并在手机不同媒介间被管理的？通过对20场半结构化访谈的分析，我们发现伴侣常通过"隐私沉默"——即有意避免与隐私相关的对话——来调节隐私实践。我们识别出五种保持边界不被言明的动机：认为隐私在亲密关系中不必要、假定对边界的默示尊重、传递信任与亲密感、避免潜在冲突或伤害，以及回应更广泛的社会文化期待（这些期待不鼓励明确的隐私对话）。我们还发现了一种按内容划分的隐私敏感度层级结构，从金融数据等高隐私领域到流媒体账户等低风险领域，并揭示了这些优先级如何随关系阶段变化。这些发现揭示了沉默、文化及内容敏感度如何塑造日常边界设定，并强调了支撑手机隐私管理的关系与情感动态。