How Users Read and Comprehend Privacy Policies

Abstract

This study examined participants’ comprehension of Web privacy policies when the information from the policy had to be recalled from memory or when participants were able to view the policy while searching for the answers to specific questions. Eye-gaze data were analyzed to examine where users focus their attention when reading privacy policies and searching for information in them. Overall, participants showed poor comprehension of the information conveyed in the privacy policies even though they were written at the participants’ level of education. When searching for information in the privacy policies, participants relied on the listing of individual sections provided at the beginning of a privacy policy, when available. When the listing of sections was not available, participants skimmed the entire policy, examining the headings and first few words of each paragraph to determine whether the sections or paragraphs were likely to contain the information for which they were searching.