Abstract
<roman><b>Background:</b></roman> Many countries mandate transparency and consent when personal data are handled by online services. However, most users do not read privacy policies or cannot understand them. An important challenge for technical communicators is empowering users to manage their online privacy responsibly. <roman><b>Literature review:</b></roman> Research suggests that privacy visualizations may alleviate this problem, but existing approaches are incomplete and under-researched. <roman><b>Research questions:</b></roman> 1. How can we design a privacy rating that optimally empowers users with different levels of knowledge about and awareness of online privacy? 2. How do users react to such a privacy rating, in terms of usability, perceived usefulness, and trust in online services? <roman><b>Methodology:</b></roman> We developed Privacy Rating, a tool for mapping and visualizing the privacy of online services. The tool was subjected to user research (N = 30) focusing on usability, perceived usefulness, and effects on trust. To establish the effects on trust, participants were exposed to a website with either a positive or a negative privacy rating. <roman><b>Results:</b></roman> The Privacy Rating appeared to be usable and useful for lay users, and it had a significant effect on users’ trust in the online service. Users indicated that they would like the visualization to become an established standard, preferably approved by an independent organization. <roman><b>Conclusions:</b></roman> The Privacy Rating is a user-friendly privacy visualization covering all relevant aspects of privacy. We aim to bring the tool to the market and make it a standard, ideally supported by an independent trustworthy organization.
Highlights
Imagine giving a complete stranger your address and phone number, the contact information of everyone you know, unlimited access to your photos, a detailed account of your media use, all your private messages, and real-time updates on your whereabouts
The complex, multifaceted, and intangible nature of online privacy may amplify the cognitive biases that users already have, including optimism bias, status quo bias, app desirability bias, and anchoring [13], [14]
We describe the development and evaluation of the Privacy Rating, a new privacy visualization that we have developed for online services
Summary
Imagine giving a complete stranger your address and phone number, the contact information of everyone you know, unlimited access to your photos, a detailed account of your media use, all your private messages, and real-time updates on your whereabouts. It sounds extreme, but most of us risk doing just that every day— by using online services. The complex, multifaceted, and intangible nature of online privacy may amplify the cognitive biases that users already have, including optimism bias (underestimating the risks of unsafe behaviors), status quo bias (exhibiting an affinity for default choices), app desirability bias (adjusting privacy concerns based on the attractiveness of the app), and anchoring (taking other users’ behaviors as a reference point) [13], [14]. We believe that online privacy deserves more attention within our discipline because it is an increasingly prominent and inherently complex aspect of the interaction between humans and technology, and could benefit from the verbal and visual communication competencies that typically define the strength of our discipline
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