The Biggest Lie on the Internet: Ignoring the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service Policies of Social Networking Services

Obar, Jonathan A.; Oeldorf-Hirsch, Anne

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2757465

Cited by 142 publications

(141 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Apart from these solutions based on browser settings, natural language privacy policies remain the main means to inform the user about websites' data processing practices. Studies have shown that users rarely read privacy policies because of their length and complex vocabulary [27], [30].…”

Section: B Technical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…McDonald and Cranor [27] concluded that a typical web user would have to spend 244 hours annually if they wanted to read every privacy policy of the websites they visit; it would further require a college degree to actually understand them [31]. Obar et al recently confirmed that few people open privacy policies or terms of service they agree to when registering for a service, and over 90 % miss important details [30]. Still, reading privacy policies can help consumers build trust in companies [10], although recently Turow et al [40] published a meta-study and showed that the pure existence of a privacy policy seems to be sufficient to achieve this goal, due to misconceptions of companies' data practices.…”

Section: B Usefulness Of Privacy Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

We Value Your Privacy ... Now Take Some Cookies: Measuring the GDPR's Impact on Web Privacy

Degeling

Utz

Lentzsch

et al. 2019

Proceedings 2019 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium

158

171

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The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect on May 25, 2018. Its privacy regulations apply to any service and company collecting or processing personal data in Europe. Many companies had to adjust their data handling processes, consent forms, and privacy policies to comply with the GDPR's transparency requirements. We monitored this rare event by analyzing changes on popular websites in all 28 member states of the European Union. For each country, we periodically examined its 500 most popular websites -6,579 in total -for the presence of and updates to their privacy policy between December 2017 and October 2018. While many websites already had privacy policies, we find that in some countries up to 15.7 % of websites added new privacy policies by May 25, 2018, resulting in 84.5 % of websites having privacy policies. 72.6 % of websites with existing privacy policies updated them close to the date. After May this positive development slowed down noticeably. Most visibly, 62.1 % of websites in Europe now display cookie consent notices, 16 % more than in January 2018. These notices inform users about a site's cookie use and user tracking practices. We categorized all observed cookie consent notices and evaluated 28 common implementations with respect to their technical realization of cookie consent. Our analysis shows that core web security mechanisms such as the same-origin policy pose problems for the implementation of consent according to GDPR rules, and opting out of third-party cookies requires the third party to cooperate. Overall, we conclude that the web became more transparent at the time GDPR came into force, but there is still a lack of both functional and usable mechanisms for users to consent to or deny processing of their personal data on the Internet.

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Section: B Technical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: B Usefulness Of Privacy Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

We Value Your Privacy ... Now Take Some Cookies: Measuring the GDPR's Impact on Web Privacy

Degeling

Utz

Lentzsch

et al. 2019

Proceedings 2019 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium

158

171

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While it is well understood that lengthy terms of service are often not sufficiently readable [44], and that most people do not read them [45], it is of concern that so many applications, including those from QS market leaders, fail to make fundamental information about the way their services function available in situ. With data protection regimes such as the EU's GDPR strengthening the requirements for clear privacy notices at the time of data collection, it is evident that this is being regularly subverted by many QS applications.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Privacy of mHealth Apps for Self-Tracking: Heuristic Evaluation Approach (Preprint)

Hutton¹,

Price²,

Kelly³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Background: The increasing sophistication of self-tracking technologies allows individuals to generate significant quantities of timely and accurate data about their lifestyle, biology, and environment, which can be used to support health interventions and measure outcomes. However, such user-generated data is often not treated with the sensitivity of other medical data, with data stored and processed by vendors with commercial motivations, such as enabling targeted advertising and making inferences from linked data. As the sensors and applications which enable these technologies continue to become more sophisticated, the privacy implications may become more severe. Methods for systematically identifying and

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“…These initiatives, however, have been criticized for their failure to provide users with the information and/or tools that would facilitate real empowerment. For example, privacy policies, which aim to provide transparency and notice about how websites collect and use information gleaned from their visits, have been critiqued for being long and difficult to understand (Fernback & Papacharissi, 2007;McDonald & Cranor, 2008;Obar & Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2016;Reidenberg et al, 2015). The efficacy of privacy settings on social network sites such as Facebook, which aim to provide individuals with choice about who can access their personal information, are challenged by frequent revisions that publicize information intended to be kept private (boyd & Hargittai, 2010;Hargittai & Marwick, 2016).…”

Section: What Resignation Reveals About Policy Approaches To Privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

From Privacy Pragmatist to Privacy Resigned: Challenging Narratives of Rational Choice in Digital Privacy Debates

Draper¹

2016

Policy &Amp; Internet

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The “empowered consumer” (or “privacy pragmatist”), an autonomous individual who makes informed decisions about the disclosure of their personal information, has dominated discussions on digital privacy. Despite increasing evidence that “control” is a problematic framework through which to operationalize privacy, the power of this figure persists in academic, regulatory, and commercial discourses in the United States. This article examines how Alan Westin's “privacy pragmatist” figure has been used to frame privacy within a typology of personal preference. It begins by reviewing existing critiques of the pragmatist model and the version of privacy it supports. While critiques have tended to focus on the methodological and theoretical strengths and weaknesses of Westin's model, two recent studies suggesting that people may be resigned to online privacy violations reveal an additional rationale for broadening policy discussions about privacy beyond the model offered by Westin.

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The Biggest Lie on the Internet: Ignoring the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service Policies of Social Networking Services

Cited by 142 publications

References 20 publications

We Value Your Privacy ... Now Take Some Cookies: Measuring the GDPR's Impact on Web Privacy

We Value Your Privacy ... Now Take Some Cookies: Measuring the GDPR's Impact on Web Privacy

Assessing the Privacy of mHealth Apps for Self-Tracking: Heuristic Evaluation Approach (Preprint)

From Privacy Pragmatist to Privacy Resigned: Challenging Narratives of Rational Choice in Digital Privacy Debates

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