Understanding Online Privacy-A Systematic Review of Privacy Visualizations and Privacy by Design Guidelines

Privacy visualizations help users understand the privacy implications of using an online service. Privacy by Design guidelines provide generally accepted privacy standards for developers of online services. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of online privacy, we review established approaches, distill a unified list of 15 privacy attributes and rank them based on perceived importance by users and privacy experts. We then discuss similarities, explain notable differences, and examine trends in terms of the attributes covered. Finally, we show how our results provide a foundation for user-centric privacy visualizations, inspire best practices for developers, and give structure to privacy policies.

Automated summary

The article explores the importance of privacy visualizations and provides a unified list of 15 privacy attributes, ranked based on user and privacy experts' perception. It reviews existing approaches, identifies similarities and notable differences, and examines trends in covered attributes. The results are shown to serve as a foundation for user-centric privacy visualizations, inspire developers' best practices, and structure privacy policies.