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White Paper / Technical Report

Standardizing Privacy Notices: An Online Study of the Nutrition Label Approach

Patrick Gage Kelley, Lucian Cesca, Joanna Bresee, Lorrie Faith Cranor

CMU-CyLab-09-014, November 2009

November 2009

Part ofPrivacy Nutrition Labels →

Published versionStandardizing Privacy Notices: An Online Study of the Nutrition Label Approach. Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10), 2010 →

Abstract

Earlier work has shown that consumers cannot effectively find information in privacy policies and that they do not enjoy using them. In our previous research on nutrition labeling and other similar consumer information design processes we developed a standardized table format for privacy policies. We compared this standardized format, and two short variants (one tabular, one text) with the current status quo: full text natural language policies and layered policies. We conducted an online user study of 789 participants to test if these three more intentionally designed, standardized privacy policy formats, assisted by consumer education, can benefit consumers. Our results show that providing standardized privacy policy presentations can have significant positive effects on accuracy and speed of information finding and reader enjoyment with privacy policies.

Cite this paper
@techreport{kelley2009standardizing,
  title     = {Standardizing Privacy Notices: An Online Study of the Nutrition Label Approach},
  author    = {Kelley, Patrick Gage and Cesca, Lucian and Bresee, Joanna and Cranor, Lorrie Faith},
  year      = {2009},
  institution = {CMU-CyLab-09-014, November 2009},
  url       = {https://pgk.io/papers/2009-standardizing-privacy-notices-an-online-study-of-the/},
}
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