The dark side of transparency: When hiding in plain sight works

A hider publicly commits to the number of seekers and then privately gets involved in a story, which may be compromising. Each seeker aims to be the first to learn and report a compromising story. The seekers learn the story privately and in continuous time. With more seekers, the hider's story gets revealed at a faster rate, but each seeker gets discouraged and ceases learning more quickly. To reduce the probability of a compromising report, the hider may optimally choose infinitely many seekers. Nevertheless, the hider unambiguously benefits from making it harder for each seeker to learn her story. •A hider publicly commits to the number of seekers who have access to her.•When the hider does not know whether she will have anything compromising to hide, the hider may optimally commit to open access policy with infinitely many seekers.•Open access policy discourages each individual seeker from undertaking private learning.•With more seekers, each seeker who is looking for a compromising story quickly becomes pessimistic and stops looking because he thinks that, had there been anything compromising to uncover, somebody would probably have found it already.