short-paper

Stop annoying me!: an empirical investigation of the usability of app privacy notifications

Authors:

Nicholas Micallef,

Maher AlharbyAuthors Info & Claims

OzCHI '17: Proceedings of the 29th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction

Pages 371 - 375

https://doi.org/10.1145/3152771.3156139

Published: 28 November 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Privacy nudges are a "soft-paternalistic" method to nudge (instead of force) users to make more informed privacy decisions. While previous work has shown that privacy nudges are effective in encouraging users to adjust their privacy settings, current privacy nudges are considered to be annoying. Previous research found that modalities influence the effectiveness of responses to system messages. Hence, with the aim of improving the usability of privacy nudges, we conducted both a lab and a 3-day field study to empirically investigate how users perceive receiving privacy nudges using different modalities (combinations of visual, vibration, audio and speech). Our results suggest that app designers should implement privacy nudges which cede the decision of their delivery time to the users themselves. Most importantly, our findings reveal that to minimize annoyance, intrusiveness and interruption, while still being read, low priority notifications should not be delivered using salient modalities (i.e., audio or speech).¹

References

[1]

Hazim Almuhimedi, Florian Schaub, Norman Sadeh, Idris Adjerid, Alessandro Acquisti, Joshua Gluck, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. 2015. Your Location has been Shared 5,398 Times!: A Field Study on Mobile App Privacy Nudging. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '15, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 787--796.

Digital Library

[2]

Lynne Baillie, and Raimund Schatz. 2005. Exploring multimodality in the laboratory and the field. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Multimodal interfaces, 100--107.

Digital Library

[3]

Rebecca Balebako, Jaeyeon Jung, Wei Lu, Lorrie Faith Cranor, and Carolyn Nguyen. 2013. "Little brothers watching you": raising awareness of data leaks on smartphones. In Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security - SOUPS '13, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1.

Digital Library

[4]

Adrienne Porter Felt, Elizabeth Ha, Serge Egelman, Ariel Haney, Erika Chin, and David Wagner. 2012. Android permissions: user attention, comprehension, and behavior. In Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security - SOUPS '12, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1.

Digital Library

[5]

Huiqing Fu, Yulong Yang, Nileema Shingte, Janne Lindqvist, and Marco Gruteser. 2014. A field study of run-time location access disclosures on android smartphones. In Proceedings of USEC 2014.

[6]

Marian Harbach, Markus Hettig, Susanne Weber, and Matthew Smith. 2014. Using personal examples to improve risk communication for security & privacy decisions. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '14, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2647--2656.

Digital Library

[7]

Patrick Gage Kelley, Lorrie Faith Cranor, and Norman Sadeh. 2013. Privacy as part of the app decision-making process. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '13, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3393.

Digital Library

[8]

Jesper Kjeldskov, Mikael B. Skov, Benedikte S. Als, and Rune T. Høegh. 2004. Is It Worth the Hassle? Exploring the Added Value of Evaluating the Usability of Context-Aware Mobile Systems in the Field. In Proceedings of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction - MobileHCI 2004, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 61--73.

[9]

Ilaria Liccardi, Joseph Pato, and Daniel Weitzner. 2014. Improving User Choice Through Better Mobile Apps Transparency and Permissions Analysis. Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality, 5(2), pp.1--55.

[10]

Bin Liu, Mads Schaarup Andersen, Florian Schaub, Hazim Almuhimedi, S. A. Zhang, Norman Sadeh, Alessandro Acquisti, and Yuvraj Agarwal. 2016. Follow My Recommendations: A Personalized Privacy Assistant for Mobile App Permissions. In Proceedings of Twelfth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2016), USENIX Association, 27--41.

[11]

Marilyn R McGee-Lennon, Maria Wolters, and Tony McBryan. 2007. Audio Reminders in the Home Environment. International Community on Auditory Display, Retrieved August 23, 2015 from https://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/49977

[12]

Nicholas Micallef. 2015. Evaluating the usability of ambient profiles for context-sensitive authentication on smartphones. Ph.D. Dissertation. Glasgow Caledonian University

[13]

Nicholas Micallef, Lynne Baillie, and Stephen Uzor. 2016. Time to exercise!: an aide-memoire stroke app for post-stroke arm rehabilitation. In Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services - MobileHCI '16, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 112--123.

Digital Library

[14]

Nicholas Micallef, Mike Just, Lynne Baillie, Martin Halvey, and Hilmi Gunes Kayacik. 2015. Why aren't users using protection? Investigating the usability of smartphone locking. In Proceedings of the 17th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services - MobileHCI '15, ACM Press.

Digital Library

[15]

Nicholas Micallef, Hilmi Güneş Kayacik, Mike Just, Lynne Baillie, and David Aspinall. 2015. Sensor use and usefulness: Trade-offs for data-driven authentication on mobile devices. In Proceedings of 2015 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom), St. Louis, MO, pp. 189--197.

[16]

Sameer Patil, Roberto Hoyle, Roman Schlegel, Apu Kapadia, and Adam J. Lee. 2015. Interrupt Now or Inform Later?: Comparing Immediate and Delayed Privacy Feedback. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1415--1418.

Digital Library

[17]

Sameer Patil, Roman Schlegel, Apu Kapadia, and Adam J. Lee. 2014. Reflection or action?: how feedback and control affect location sharing decisions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 101--110.

Digital Library

[18]

Paul Pearce, Adrienne Porter Felt, Gabriel Nunez, and David Wagner. 2012. AdDroid privilege separation for applications and advertisers in Android. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security - ASIACCS '12, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 71.

Digital Library

[19]

Hans-Rüdiger Pfister, Sabine Wollstädter, and Christian Peter. 2011. Affective responses to system messages in human-computer-interaction: Effects of modality and message type. Interacting with Computers, 23, 4 (Jul. 2011), 372--383

[20]

PrivacyGrade. PrivacyGrade. Retrieved August 5, 2017 from http://www.privacygrade.org/apps

[21]

Fuming Shih, Ilaria Liccardi, and Daniel Weitzner. 2015. Privacy Tipping Points in Smartphones Privacy Preferences. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 807--816.

Digital Library

[22]

Yang Wang, Pedro Giovanni Leon, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Alain Forget, and Norman Sadeh. 2014. A field trial of privacy nudges for facebook. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2367--2376.

Digital Library

[23]

Fengpeng Yuan, Xianyi Gao, and Janne Lindqvist. 2017. How Busy Are You?: Predicting the Interruptibility Intensity of Mobile Users. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5346--5360.

Digital Library

[24]

Bo Zhang and Heng Xu. 2016. Privacy Nudges for Mobile Applications: Effects on the Creepiness Emotion and Privacy Attitudes. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing - CSCW '16, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1674--1688.

Digital Library

Cited By

Konstantinou LPanos DKarapanos E(2024)Exploring the Design of Technology-Mediated Nudges for Online MisinformationInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2023.2301265(1-28)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2023.2301265
Watson KJust MBerg T(2023)A comic-based approach to permission request communicationComputers and Security10.1016/j.cose.2022.102942124:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cose.2022.102942
Luzsa RMayr S(2022)Links Between Online Privacy Fatigue, Technology Attitudes and Sociodemographic Factors in a German Population SampleProceedings of Mensch und Computer 202210.1145/3543758.3547540(360-364)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543758.3547540
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Stop annoying me!: an empirical investigation of the usability of app privacy notifications
1. Security and privacy
  1. Human and societal aspects of security and privacy
    1. Usability in security and privacy

Recommendations

Your Location has been Shared 5,398 Times!: A Field Study on Mobile App Privacy Nudging
CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Smartphone users are often unaware of the data collected by apps running on their devices. We report on a study that evaluates the benefits of giving users an app permission manager and sending them nudges intended to raise their awareness of the data ...
Never Stop Creating: A Preliminary Inquiry in Older Adults' Everyday Innovations
PervasiveHealth'19: Proceedings of the 13th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare

Participation in activities of personal interest and passion facilitates older adults' health and well-being. In this study, we investigated older adults' experiences related to their engagement and development of personal interests. We found out that ...
Not Merely Deemed as Distraction: Investigating Smartphone Users’ Motivations for Notification-Interaction
CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Notifications are commonly considered a distraction when they arrive during a task, and consequently, prior research has consistently sought effective ways of deferring their arrival until task transitions. However, many smartphone users still interact ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

OzCHI '17: Proceedings of the 29th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction

November 2017

678 pages

ISBN:9781450353793

DOI:10.1145/3152771

Conference Chair:
Margot Brereton
Queensland University of Technology
,
Editors:
Alessandro Soro
Queensland University of Technology
,
Dhaval Vyas
Queensland University of Technology
,
Bernd Ploderer
Queensland University of Technology
,
Ann Morrison
University of Southern Queensland
,
Jenny Waycott
University of Melbourne
,
Margot Brereton
Queensland University of Technology

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 28 November 2017

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Short-paper

Conference

OzCHI '17

OzCHI '17: 29th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

November 28 - December 1, 2017

Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Acceptance Rates

OzCHI '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 74 of 157 submissions, 47%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 362 of 729 submissions, 50%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

18
Total Citations
View Citations
473
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)52
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)7

Reflects downloads up to 16 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Konstantinou LPanos DKarapanos E(2024)Exploring the Design of Technology-Mediated Nudges for Online MisinformationInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2023.2301265(1-28)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2023.2301265
Watson KJust MBerg T(2023)A comic-based approach to permission request communicationComputers and Security10.1016/j.cose.2022.102942124:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cose.2022.102942
Luzsa RMayr S(2022)Links Between Online Privacy Fatigue, Technology Attitudes and Sociodemographic Factors in a German Population SampleProceedings of Mensch und Computer 202210.1145/3543758.3547540(360-364)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543758.3547540
Richter AKühtreiber PReinhardt D(2022)Enhanced Privacy in Smart Workplaces: Employees’ Preferences for Transparency Indicators and Control Interactions in the Case of Data Collection with Smart WatchesICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection10.1007/978-3-031-06975-8_3(34-50)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06975-8_3
Zhu FCarpenter SZeng M(2022)Subliminal Warnings: Utilizing the High Bandwidth of Nonconscious Visual PerceptionPersuasive Technology10.1007/978-3-030-98438-0_20(255-271)Online publication date: 29-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-98438-0_20
Murmann P(2021)Eliciting Design Guidelines for Privacy Notifications in mHealth EnvironmentsResearch Anthology on Privatizing and Securing Data10.4018/978-1-7998-8954-0.ch093(1909-1928)Online publication date: 2021
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-8954-0.ch093
Hartwig KReuter C(2021)Nudge or Restraint: How do People Assess Nudging in Cybersecurity - A Representative Study in GermanyProceedings of the 2021 European Symposium on Usable Security10.1145/3481357.3481514(141-150)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3481357.3481514
Dunbar JBascom EBoone AHiniker A(2021)Is Someone Listening?Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/34780915:3(1-23)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478091
Do YHoang LPark JAbowd GDas S(2021)Spidey Sense: Designing Wrist-Mounted Affective Haptics for Communicating Cybersecurity WarningsProceedings of the 2021 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3461778.3462027(125-137)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3461778.3462027
Desjardins APsarra AA. Whiting BSas CMaiden N(2021)Voices and Voids: Subverting Voice Assistant Systems through Performative ExperimentsProceedings of the 13th Conference on Creativity and Cognition10.1145/3450741.3466807(1-10)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3450741.3466807
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents