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Title: Toggles, Dollar Signs, and Triangles: How to (In)Effectively Convey Privacy Choices
Increasingly, icons are being proposed to concisely convey privacyrelated information and choices to users. However, complex privacy concepts can be difcult to communicate. We investigate which icons efectively signal the presence of privacy choices. In a series of user studies, we designed and evaluated icons and accompanying textual descriptions (link texts) conveying choice, opting-out, and sale of personal information — the latter an opt-out mandated by the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). We identifed icon-link text pairings that conveyed the presence of privacy choices without creating misconceptions, with a blue stylized toggle icon paired with “Privacy Options” performing best. The two CCPA-mandated link texts (“Do Not Sell My Personal Information” and “Do Not Sell My Info”) accurately communicated the presence of do-notsell opt-outs with most icons. Our results provide insights for the design of privacy choice indicators and highlight the necessity of incorporating user testing into policy making.
Authors:
; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Award ID(s):
1801316
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10289281
Journal Name:
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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