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Conference & Journal Paper

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

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

Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10), 2010

April 2010

Selected for the Privacy Papers for Policy Makers publication, Future of Privacy Forum.

Part ofPrivacy Nutrition Labels →

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 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 764 participants to test if these three more-intentionally designed, standardized privacy policy formats, assisted by consumer education, can benefit consumers. Our results show that standardized privacy policy presentations can have significant positive effects on accuracy and speed of information finding and on reader enjoyment of privacy policies.

Cite this paper
@inproceedings{kelley2010standardizing,
  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      = {2010},
  doi       = {10.1145/1753326.1753561},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753561},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10), 2010},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address   = {New York, NY, USA},
}
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