{"id":18471,"date":"2019-11-03T01:57:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-03T01:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=18471"},"modified":"2019-11-04T11:34:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-04T11:34:29","slug":"website-privacy-options-arent-much-of-a-choice-since-theyre-hard-to-find-and-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/website-privacy-options-arent-much-of-a-choice-since-theyre-hard-to-find-and-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Website privacy options aren’t much of a choice since they’re hard to find and use"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hana Habib<\/a>, Carnegie Mellon University<\/a><\/em> and Lorrie Cranor<\/a>, Carnegie Mellon University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve probably encountered a pair of shoes that won\u2019t stop following you around the internet, appearing in advertisements on different sites for weeks.<\/p>\n

Today, the vast majority of advertising is targeted \u2013 that is, you see an ad because an advertiser thinks that you, specifically, might be interested in what they have to offer. You may have visited a store page for a pair of shoes, or maybe there\u2019s something in your internet browsing history that places you in their target demographic.<\/p>\n

While many websites offer a way to opt out of targeted advertisements or unwanted emails, we<\/a> discovered<\/a> in our recent research<\/a> that exercising privacy choices isn\u2019t always easy. But that helped us formulate some simple solutions that could make things easier for users around the web.<\/p>\n

Anything but standardized<\/h2>\n

Our<\/a> team<\/a> of research<\/a> collaborators<\/a> examined the privacy choices available on 150 English language websites. On each site, we searched for three common types of privacy choices: requests to be removed from \u2013 that is, opt out of \u2013 email marketing, opt-outs for targeted advertising and data deletion choices. For each privacy choice, we noted where on the website it was located and the steps required to exercise the choice.<\/p>\n

The good news is that most websites do offer relevant opt-outs or data deletion options. Eighty-nine percent of sites with email marketing or targeted advertising offered opt-outs for those practices, and 74% had a way for users to request their data be deleted.<\/p>\n

More good news: Nearly all websites had a privacy policy link on their homepage, and many of these policies included privacy choices.<\/p>\n

The bad news is that the privacy policies we surveyed were long \u2013 on average 3,951 words. They were difficult to read, with only one-third including a table of contents. These policies were written well above the eighth grade reading level considered appropriate for the general public<\/a>. Worse, the sections containing privacy choices were even harder to read and understand than the rest of the policy, requiring university-level reading ability.<\/p>\n

Key terms aren\u2019t standardized across privacy policies on different sites. When we examined privacy policy section headings, we looked for phrases that appeared in multiple policies, such as \u201cyour choices\u201d and \u201copt out.\u201d Unfortunately, we did not find much consistency.<\/p>\n