Evaluating privacy-determining user privacy expectations on the web

Individuals don't often have privacy expectations. When asked to consider them, privacy realities were frequently perceived not to meet these expectations. Some websites exploit the trust of individuals by selling, sharing, or analysing their data. Without intervention, individuals do not often understand privacy implications, nor do anything to address it. This study has identified that many users do not have privacy expectations. An extension developed for this study improved privacy awareness, privacy behaviour, and created pri-vacy expectations in participants. The extension also demonstrated that privacy-focused behavioural changes occur when individuals consider the implications of privacy policies, and are exposed to the ways in which their data is being used. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

Automated summary

Individuals often lack privacy expectations and are unaware of how their data is being used by websites. Increased privacy awareness and behavioral changes can be achieved through interventions that highlight privacy implications and the ways data is being handled.