Users Of Online Services Research Articles

Crumbling Cookie Categories: Deconstructing Common Cookie Categories to Create Categories that People Understand

Users of online services often encounter cookie banners that ask them to consent to different categories of cookies. Frequently, these categories are labelled using the four categories defined by the 2012 Cookie Guide from the UK's International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). However, prior research suggests that users have difficulty understanding what these category labels actually mean. We conducted a four-part study to identify labels that more intuitively convey the four cookie categories. First, we crowd sourced new category labels. We then evaluated users' comprehension and sentiment towards the labels in a series of surveys focused on definitions and hypothetical scenarios. Finally, we selected a new slate of category labels based on the results of the prior surveys, and conducted a between-subjects, online behavioral experiment to compare the new slate with the original labels. We ultimately recommend that the industry adopt the category label ``anonymous analytics cookies'' in lieu of the term ``performance cookies'' and ``extra functionality cookies'' instead of ``functional cookies.'' Adopting our recommended terms would both improve the usability of current cookie consent interfaces and any future privacy consent mechanisms that use the same categorization. We also recommend revisiting the categories themselves as the distinctions between these categories do not seem to be well understood and may not reflect useful distinctions for privacy decision making.

Beyond lazy; external locus of control as an alternative explanation for the privacy paradox

PurposeThe privacy paradox refers to the situation where users of online services continue to disclose personal information even when they are concerned about their privacy. One recent study of Facebook users published in Internet Research concludes that laziness contributes to the privacy paradox. The purpose of this study is to challenge the laziness explanation. To do so, we adopt a cognitive dispositions perspective and examine how a person’s external locus of control influences the privacy paradox, beyond the trait of laziness.Design/methodology/approachA mixed method approach is adopted. We first develop a research model which hypothesises the moderating effects of both laziness and external locus of control on privacy issues. We quantitatively test the research model through a two-phase survey of 463 Facebook users using the Hayes PROCESS macro. We then conduct a qualitative study to verify and develop the findings from the quantitative phase.FindingsThe privacy paradox holds true. The findings confirm the significant influence of external locus of control on the privacy paradox. While our quantitative findings suggest laziness does not affect the association between privacy concerns and self-disclosure, our qualitative data does provide some support for the laziness explanation.Originality/valueOur study extends existing research by showing that a person’s external locus of control provides a stronger explanation for the privacy paradox than the laziness perspective. As such, this study further reveals the boundary conditions on which the privacy paradox exists for some users of social networking sites, but not others. Our study also suggests cognitive dissonance coping strategies, which are largely absent in prior investigations, may influence the privacy paradox.

MULTIDIMENSIONAL MODEL FOR DIGITAL TRUST OF DIGITAL SERVICES USERS: RESULTS OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

The paper addresses the development of a multidimensional model of consumer trust of online services users, including such dimensions as trust in the effectiveness of regulatory activities of the state, consumer trust in online services, interpersonal trust, and predisposition to trust. Consumer trust studies in Russia are conducted primarily either in an offline context, or with an emphasis on only one of the dimensions of trust, at the same time Russian studies are mainly conceptual. The presented study is the first in Russia conducted using empirical tools and analyzing consumer trust as a multidimensional construct in an online context. The object of the empirical study is the users of online services - representatives of generations Y and Z, with the sample of the pilot study of 388 respondents, the Structural Equation Modeling method (PLS-SEM) used for analysis. The study reveals a significant influence of the predisposition to trust and the perceived effectiveness of the regulatory activities of the state on interpersonal trust. A significant positive influence of trust predisposition on the trust in online service is also confirmed, but no significant influence of the perceived effectiveness of the regulatory activity of the state on the trust in the online service was found. The study reveals a significant influence of interpersonal trust on trust in online services and the influence of trust in online services on consumers’ intention to use the service. The present effects of mediation and moderation are tested in the model. The presented research is relevant not only from a theoretical point of view, but also from a practical one, since the developed model allows us to identify the factors that form consumer trust in the online service. The findings demonstrate the perceived characteristics of the company which form consumer trust, and the factors that can reduce the negative impact of consumer distrust on the intention to use the service.

Online Service Acceptance Model of Population and Civil Registration Agency in Indonesia using Technology Acceptance Model

The application of online services at the Population and Civil Registry Service (Disdukcapil) in Indonesia is important in increasing the efficiency and quality of public services. However, the success of reveiving online services is still a major concern for the government and public service managers. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the online service acceptance model at Disdukcapil in Indonesia using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The data collection method was carried out through a survey of potential users of online services and using Partial Least Squares – Structural Equation Model (PLS – SEM) to analyze the data. The results showed that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitudes towards system, behavioural intention and the actual system usage which are the dimensions of the Technology Acceptance Model have a positive effect on acceptance of online services at Disdukcapil in Indonesia. The findings can be used as a guide for policy makers and public service managers to increase acceptance and adoption of online services in the government sector. In addition, this research is expected to provide a strong foundation in improving and improving public services effectively using technology.

Transferred expectations of human presence: Folk theories among older adults who are inexperienced users of online services

This study analyses the expectations of older adults who are inexperienced users of online media and services, examining their sense-making processes when using the internet for informational and practical purposes. Research on older users often focuses on access and abilities, but this study instead explores older adults’ expectations of what it means to interact online. We apply a ‘folk theory’ framework to illuminate underlying perceptions that guide behaviours, by asking which folk theories older adults draw on to make sense of their experiences with the internet. The empirical data originates from qualitative in-depth interviews and participant observation sessions with 25 people aged 65–98 years in Norway. We identify four interconnected folk theories under the shared theme of transferring expectations from the offline world: expecting human involvement, expecting visibility, lack of a human safety net, and human limitations and social conventions. Our analysis shows how such folk theories inform user decisions, including hindrances and problem-solving, as older adults adapt to digital services in everyday life.

Examining the influence of online service usage habits on long-term intention to use virtual fiscal device systems in Tanzania: a taxpayer's perspective

Examining the influence of online service usage habits on long-term intention to use virtual fiscal device systems in Tanzania: a taxpayer's perspective

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DIGITAL CHANNELS IN BUSINESS PROCESSES AND ACCESS TO FINANCE FOR MSMES IN AZERBAIJAN

Digitalization is assessed as a factor contributing to the sustainable growth of business entities. Implementation of digital solutions has been recognized as a key tool stimulating expansion and development of micro, small and medium enterprises into the economy. Micro small and medium enterprises represent a vast majority of firms in Azerbaijan. Limited access to financial resources is one of the key challenges exhibited by this size of enterprises. The rate of usage of online services by firms accelerated after COVID-19 pandemic. Despite significant progress during recent years, the adoption level of digital technologies particularly for financial services among population and entrepreneurs still needs to be developed. This article applies time series regression analysis and finds the existence of positive relationship between digitalization of business activities exemplified by e-commerce and the amount of credit funds allocated micro, small and medium business entities. The authors suggest about the existence of other factors that contribute to financial inclusion of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Machine Learning-Based Text Classification Comparison: Turkish Language Context

The growth in textual data associated with the increased usage of online services and the simplicity of having access to these data has resulted in a rise in the number of text classification research papers. Text classification has a significant influence on several domains such as news categorization, the detection of spam content, and sentiment analysis. The classification of Turkish text is the focus of this work since only a few studies have been conducted in this context. We utilize data obtained from customers’ inquiries that come to an institution to evaluate the proposed techniques. Classes are assigned to such inquiries specified in the institution’s internal procedures. The Support Vector Machine, Naïve Bayes, Long Term-Short Memory, Random Forest, and Logistic Regression algorithms were used to classify the data. The performance of the various techniques was then analyzed after and before data preparation, and the results were compared. The Long Term-Short Memory technique demonstrated superior effectiveness in terms of accuracy, achieving an 84% accuracy rate, surpassing the best accuracy record of traditional techniques, which was 78% accuracy for the Support Vector Machine technique. The techniques performed better once the number of categories in the dataset was reduced. Moreover, the findings show that data preparation and coherence between the classes’ number and the number of training sets are significant variables influencing the techniques’ performance. The findings of this study and the text classification technique utilized may be applied to data in dialects other than Turkish.

Use, satisfaction, and preference of online health services among older adults with multimorbidity in Hong Kong primary care during COVID-19

BackgroundThe use of online and mobile internet and social media has been increasing in healthcare service delivery. However, there is limited literature on the acceptance and use of online health services for older adults with multimorbidity who require more medical care and assistance. This study aims to explore the use of social media in older adults with multimorbidity in Hong Kong primary care and to assess the feasibility and usage of online health services in this population, including satisfaction, preference, and problems encountered.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study among older adults with multimorbidity conducted between November 2020 and March 2021 in a Hong Kong primary care programme. Online and face-to-face services were offered based on the needs of the participants. Demographic characteristics and health conditions were assessed at baseline. Participants using online services were invited to complete a feedback questionnaire.ResultsThe study included 752 participants, of which 66.1% use social media every day. Participants who declined to use online services were found to be significantly older, live alone, have lower income, have social security assistance, have greater cognitive decline, and be less depressed (p < 0.05). Non-responders to the online questionnaire had fewer years of education and greater cognitive decline (p < 0.05). The median satisfaction with the online services was 8 (interquartile range: 7, 9), and 14.6% of the participants preferred online more than face-to-face services. Lower education levels, fewer internet connection issues, and more self-efficacy on mobile apps were associated with a higher level of online satisfaction after adjustment (p < 0.05). Fewer internet connection issues and more self-efficacy on mobile apps were associated with participants’ preference for online services (p < 0.05).ConclusionsMore than half of Hong Kong older adults with multimorbidity in primary care use social media daily. Internet connection issues can be a significant barrier to the usage of online services in this population. Prior use and training can be beneficial to enhance use and satisfaction in older adults.

Theoretical and Methodological Bases of Developing Save Digital Education Environment in Professional Education: Legal and Technological Aspects

This article is the continuation of the research started in 2020 based at Science and Education Centre “Digital education environment” of department of law at Lomonosov Moscow State University. Research subject are general methodological bases of developing save Digital education environment (DEE), technological and legal aspects of ensuring its safety. In this work, the authors have studied the idea of DEE security. The analysis of tendencies and challenges that influence the safety of DEE were provided. To ensure secure usage of online services and platforms, indicators of digital education environment safety were established and analyzed. Stated indicators are examined through the prism of education quality criteria (based on the previously developed approach). In this article, existing legal aspect of ensuring safety of DEE and its individual constituents are studied. In the context of securing DEE safety and other adjacent problems the authors have examined the prospects of legal and organizational regulation. Namely the licensing and certification, DEE users’ legal status, user identification and control mechanisms of DEE, technological aspects of DEE safety and their legalization, the development prospects of methodological and linguistic tools, safety of micro-teaching via DEE and gamification of DEE.

Ограниченная рациональность принятия решений пользователями онлайн-сервисов микрофинансовых организаций

Microfinance is very popular in Russia, but this sphere is often associated with a number of socioeconomic problems, one of which is the population’s debt load. Often the clients of microfinance organizations (MFOs) are citizens from the poorest segments of the population who do not have a high level of financial literacy. The trend towards digitalization of the financial sector has a significant impact on the decision-making process of MFO services consumers. The subject of this paper is the problem of bounded rationality of decision-making, typical for users of online services of microfinance organizations. To reduce the negative effects on users of MFO services, the Central Bank reduces the maximum permissible interest rate for this type of organizations, and the Ministry of Finance organizes programs to improve financial literacy. The aim of the study is to estimate the efficiency of existing methods for solving this problem and to propose our own solution based on the concepts of behavioral imperialism. The relevance is that the digitalization of the financial sector is rapidly increasing, since both classic services are moving online and completely new technological financial services (fintech) appear, which requires the user to master new skills of working in the online environment. In conclusion, the author gives his recommendations for financial literacy programs that can reduce the bounded rationality of financial decision-making.

Leave No Data Behind – Empirical Insights into Data Erasure from Online Services

Privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union promise to empower users of online services and to strengthen competition in online markets. Its Article 17, the Right to Erasure (Right to be Forgotten), is part of a set of user rights that aim to give users more control over their data by allowing them to switch between services more easily and to delete their data from the old service. In our study, we investigated the data deletion practices of a sample of 90 online services. In a twostage process, we first request the erasure of our data and analyze to what extent public data (e.g., posts on a social network) remains accessible in a non-anonymized format. More than six months later, we request information on our data using Right of Access requests under Art. 15 GDPR to find out if and what data remains. Our results show that a majority of services perform data erasures without observable breaches of the provisions of Art. 17 GDPR. At 27%, the share of non-compliant services is not negligible; in particular, we observe differences between requests submitted using a dedicated button and formal requests under Art. 17 GDPR.

A Hotel Recommender System Based on Multi-Criteria Collaborative Filtering

Recommendation systems have lately gained popularity in a variety of applications due to their ability to operate as information filters, thus delivering useful suggestions to users based on the processing of a variety of information from various sources. The tourism industry, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly popular, with significant growth in the usage of online services for hotel selection and reservation. Potential travelers may, however, find that using such online services is inconvenient and time-consuming. This paper aims to develop a novel fusion-based multi-criteria collaborative filtering model that provides more effective and personalized hotel recommendations. The proposed model enhances the prediction accuracy of hotel recommendations by the deployment of multi-criteria ratings that precisely express travelers’ complex preferences and addresses the insufficiency of rating information in the hotel domain by the exploitation of the users’ and items’ implicit similarity, users’ similarity propagation, and user/item reputation concepts. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model provides higher recommendation accuracy and coverage compared to other benchmark recommendation algorithms.

Ulixes: Facial Recognition Privacy with Adversarial Machine Learning

Abstract Facial recognition tools are becoming exceptionally accurate in identifying people from images. However, this comes at the cost of privacy for users of online services with photo management (e.g. social media platforms). Particularly troubling is the ability to leverage unsupervised learning to recognize faces even when the user has not labeled their images. In this paper we propose Ulixes, a strategy to generate visually non-invasive facial noise masks that yield adversarial examples, preventing the formation of identifiable user clusters in the embedding space of facial encoders. This is applicable even when a user is unmasked and labeled images are available online. We demonstrate the effectiveness of Ulixes by showing that various classification and clustering methods cannot reliably label the adversarial examples we generate. We also study the effects of Ulixes in various black-box settings and compare it to the current state of the art in adversarial machine learning. Finally, we challenge the effectiveness of Ulixes against adversarially trained models and show that it is robust to countermeasures.

From Design Requirements to Effective Privacy Notifications: Empowering Users of Online Services to Make Informed Decisions

ABSTRACT Privacy notifications issued by Transparency-Enhancing Tools (TETs) constitute a conceptual means of informing users of online data services about how their personal data are processed. We elicit a set of design requirements that reflect the particularities of privacy notifications received on mobile phones. Pursuing the principles of human-centered design, we evaluate the efficacy of a prototypical implementation for the context of personal health tracking in an iterative lab study. Our findings show that privacy notifications have the potential to facilitate usable transparency and informed decision-making in terms of improving privacy in the designated usage context. The feedback obtained during the evaluation of the prototype lends itself to a refined set of design requirements. We discuss these requirements as building blocks that can help designers create usable artifacts that accommodate the needs of users of mobile health services.

Цифровая бедность: как онлайн-экономика фиксирует имущественное неравенство

The article discusses the problem of digital poverty, arising when communication through digital platforms reduces the cost of the process of obtaining and exchanging information and replaces traditional economic processes. Using the example of the consumption of digital and online services, the author shows how digital communications can act as a marker for differentiating the behavior of the poor and the rich. Using cluster analysis and assessment of multicollinearity, the author interprets the data of a sociological study of five groups of respondents, indicating the factors of manifestation of digital poverty in the behavior of economic agents. The problem of the digital trace formed as a result of the automated data collection from users of online services is also considered. The author notes that consumers of digital services, in exchange for discounts, transfer their personal data to digital platforms that use the information received to stimulate further online consumption through new discounts and loyalty programs, which has a negative impact on offline consumption. The study also raises the issue of the accompanying digital poverty of economic externalities, identifies markers of property inequality in the digital economy, possible options for the development of the online economy against the background of the classical communication and social relations become luxurious. It also indicates the main scenarios for leveling the effects of digital poverty.

Digitalni mediji i medijsko zakonodavstvo Republike Srbije

The contemporay technological developments have been redefining human communication, concurrently raising the question whether users of online services and various media platforms can cope with so much freedom. Thus, the Internet as a global medium opens new legal issues and poses new challenges in the field of media legislation. Information policy, and legislation must adequately respond to the challenges of the new digital age. New media pose a new challenge for law and values, not only in a speculative sense but also in a real procedural and human sense. In times of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), law should not turn a blind eye to the developments in the virtual space. The development of new digital environments and media platforms raises the question whether the legislation should be the same for all media, traditional and new ones alike. The first step in addressing this issue should be the provision of a broad and realistic definition of the concept of media, which will ensure the recognition of the new media. Secondly, media regulations and principles referring to the new media should be more flexible and less strict as compared to the traditional media (but only provisionally), which is more purposeful than turning a blind eye to the new media. Non-recognition and non-regulation of information dissemination via the Internet opens the possibility of causing much greater damage to the public interest.

Utilising AHP and PROMETHEE for evaluating the performance of online services

Limited usage of online services by citizens is one of the main obstacles to the success of e-government projects. Most of the previous studies have focussed on identification of the main significant factors affecting adoption of online services by using statistical methods for hypotheses tests. However, there is a need to go a further step and propose methodologies to examine to what extent such identified adoption factors are practically achieved. This turns the adoption process of online services to be a multi-criteria decision-making problem which make it more practical for handling. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a methodology to evaluate the performance of online services utilising two of the most well-known and extensively used multi-criteria decision-making methods. It uses the hierarchy structure of AHP while using ranking procedure of PROMETHEE. The proposed methodology has been applied to evaluate the performance of a sample of 24 services available on the Egyptian national portal. Each service has been analysed against nine acceptance criteria covering application and service aspects. It is found that 46% of the evaluated services tend to be performing quite reasonably.

Age-related differences in the digital divide: Focusing on married female immigrants

This study analyzes the determining factors of the digital divide index in married female immigrants based on panel data from the National Information Society Agency (2016). There were 287 participants, all of whom owned a smartphone. The study divided the consumer groups into three age groups: 20-29, 30-39, and 40-49 years. SPSS 19.0 was used to statistically analyze the results. The findings of the analysis were described using frequency, descriptive, cross-tab, ANOVA, correlation, and multiple regression analysis. The findings of this research are as follows. First, nationality, acquisition of Korean nationality, and duration of living in Korea were significantly different among the three groups. Second, digital competency and online service usage were also significantly different among the three groups. Third, PC usage ability, mobile usage ability, and diversity of online usage significantly influenced the digital divide index in all age groups. Fourth, residential duration in Korea significantly decreased the digital divide index for groups in their 30s and 40s. Fifth, Loneliness significantly increased the digital divide index for groups in their 20s. Sixth, depression significantly increased the digital divide index for groups in their 30s. The study will help to further understand age-related differences and the digital divide of married female immigrants. Keywords: married female immigrant, information exclusion, digital divide, negative emotions

Comparing the characteristics of users of an online service for STI self-sampling with clinic service users: a cross-sectional analysis

ObjectivesOnline services for self-sampling at home could improve access to STI testing; however, little is known about those using this new modality of care. This study describes the characteristics of...