Abstract
The goal of this study was to determine (a) users’ privacy concerns; (b) whether these privacy concerns can be checked by an existing Web-based privacy agent; and (c) whether users are able to easily specify their privacy preferences using this agent. Users were able to configure the agent correctly for about half of the desired privacy goals that could be checked by the agent. Of more significance, users thought that they had configured the agent successfully to achieve many privacy goals that cannot be accomplished with the version tested. We also examined alternative interface layouts to ascertain whether any of them allowed users to specify their preferences at a higher success rate than the current interface. We discuss implications of our findings for user agents designed to aid users’ assessments as to whether a Web site’s stated privacy practices are consistent with the users’ preferences.
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© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Proctor, R.W., Vu, KP.L., Ali, M.A. (2007). Usability of User Agents for Privacy-Preference Specification. In: Smith, M.J., Salvendy, G. (eds) Human Interface and the Management of Information. Interacting in Information Environments. Human Interface 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4558. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73354-6_84
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73354-6_84
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