The lack of privacy awareness in smartphone ecosystems prevents users from being able to compare apps in terms of privacy and from making informed privacy decisions. In this paper we analysed smartphone users' privacy perceptions and concerns based on a novel privacy enhancing tool called Android Apps Behaviour Analyser (A3). The A3 tool enables user to behaviourally analyse the privacy aspects of their installed apps and notifies about potential privacy invasive activities. To examine the capabilities of A3 we designed a user study. We captured and contrasted privacy concern and perception of 52 participants, before and after using our tool. The results showed that A3 enables users to easily detect their smartphone app's privacy violation activities. Further, we found that there is a significant difference between users' privacy concern and expectation before and after using A3 and the majority of them were surprised to learn how often their installed apps access personal resources. Overall, we observed that the A3 tool was capable to influence the participants' attitude towards protecting their privacy.
As people's offline and online lives become increasingly entwined, the sensitivity of personal information disclosed online is increasing. Disclosures often occur through structured disclosure fields (e.g., drop-down lists). Prior research suggests these fields may limit privacy, with non-disclosing users being presumed to be hiding undesirable information. We investigated this around HIV status disclosure in online dating apps used by men who have sex with men. Our online study asked participants (N = 183) to rate profiles where HIV status was either disclosed or undisclosed. We tested three designs for displaying undisclosed fields. Visibility of undisclosed fields had a significant effect on the way profiles were rated, and other profile information (e.g., ethnicity) could affect inferences that develop around undisclosed information. Our research highlights complexities around designing for non-disclosure and questions the voluntary nature of these fields. Further work is outlined to ensure disclosure control is appropriately implemented around online sensitive information disclosures.
We all too often must consent to information collection at an early stage of digital interactions, during application sign-up. Paying low attention to privacy policies, we are rarely aware of processing practices. Drawing on multidisciplinary research, we hypothesize that privacy policies presenting information in a way that triggers affective responses, combined with intrinsic characteristics of an individual, may influence privacy attitudes. Through an online quasi-experiment (N = 88), we investigate how affect, illustration type, individual characteristics and privacy concerns may influence willingness to disclose personal information and privacy awareness. Our results partially confirm these assumptions. We found that the affect may have an impact on privacy awareness. The willingness to disclose is not affected by visual design but by stable psychological constructs. We discuss the applicability of our findings in interface design and for future research.
Because of the increasing dependency on online technologies in even the most ordinary activities, people have to make privacy decisions during everyday online interactions. Visual design often influences their choices. Hence, it is in the hands of choice architects and designers to guide users towards specific decision outcomes. This ''nudging'' has gained much interest among scholars in interdisciplinary research, resulting in experimental studies with visual cues that may have the potential to alter attitudes and behaviors. Attitude and behavior changes are often attributed to several psychological effects manifesting in cognitive processing and decision-making. This article presents the results of a systematic literature review carried out to identify which psychological effects have been previously studied in the context of online privacy interactions. Subsequently, fifteen articles were selected and thoroughly reviewed, resulting in the identification of twenty psychological effects. The visual cues triggering these effects were recognized and classified against their capabilities to alter privacy attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, the visual cues were divided into two categories: privacy-enhancing and privacy-deteriorating. This review discusses the applicability of such cues in research and UI design. Further, the findings are discussed against the existing research on digital nudges. The authors conclude with a discussion on issues of research quality in the privacy-related field and outline the road to improvement.
The unprecedented pandemic of the infectious coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is still ongoing. Considering the limitations and restrictions imposed by COVID-19, we explored the role of technology and the extent of usage by end-users. In our online survey, we investigated users' perspectives on their use of technologies in diferent contexts (e.g., work, entertainment), taking into consideration intrinsic factors such as health consciousness, perceived social isolation, and pandemic-related concerns. Results from 218 respondents show a signifcant increase in technology use in all investigated contexts after the pandemic occurred. Moreover, the results suggest that diferent factors may contribute to such increases, depending on the context. It appears that perceived social isolation, concerns about the pandemic, and tracking have the most prominent infuence on diferent use of technology. Furthermore, open-ended responses include benefcial opportunities, concerns & consequences, and behavioral transformations & adaptations due to COVID-19. Our fndings provide insights for designing and developing new technologies, especially for communication and entertainment, to support users' needs during a pandemic. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI.
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