CreepyLeaks is the result of a cross-departmental collaboration at the IT University of Copenhagen and an external collaboration with University of California, Irvine.
The two responsible ITU researchers, Associate Professor Erik Grönvall (Digital Design Dept.) and Associate Professor Irina Shklovski (Business IT dept.) had before creating CreepyLeaks
independently worked on diverse aspects of what later became CreepyLeaks. Erik have designed and built hardware to explore on-body notifications, sensor augmentation and how people
can perceive information sources and data normally hidden to them by using electrodes connected to the body and Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS). Irina have explored Creepyness and how people perceive some aspects of modern, everyday technology as being creepy. Studying creepiness, Irina have for example researched how people perceive data leakages occurring on their private mobile devices.
Irina and Erik identified complementary aspects of their work and set out to design a collaborative study investigating, and informing a public debate around, data leakage from people private mobile devices and how on-body notifications (using EMS) affects people and their understanding of data privacy over time. One component of CreepyLeaks is the app AntMonitor developed by researchers at University of California, Irvine with whom Irina and Erik collaborate.