A Value-centered Exploration of Data Privacy and Personalized Privacy Assistants

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Privacy Studies
• Information Science

Background:

• Current privacy notices, prevalent post-GDPR, are ineffective for informed user decision-making.
• Existing notices often fail to align with users' personal values and privacy preferences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore repurposing privacy notices for value-centered user decisions.
• To operationalize value-centered privacy decisions using Suzy Killmister's Four-Dimensional Theory of Autonomy (4DT).
• To design a value-centered privacy assistant (VcPA) to facilitate these decisions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized 4DT to define and design for value-centered privacy decisions.
• Assessed existing personalized privacy assistants (PPAs) through the 4DT lens.
• Informed VcPA design based on PPA assessment and 4DT insights.

Main Results:

• Privacy notices can be repurposed to support value-centered decision-making.
• Existing PPAs do not fully leverage notices for value-centered choices.
• A VcPA can effectively assist users in making value-centered app selections and other privacy decisions.

Conclusions:

• A VcPA, guided by 4DT, can enhance user autonomy in data privacy.
• Repurposing privacy notices is key to facilitating meaningful, value-aligned privacy choices.
• Future systems should prioritize supporting users' personal values in data privacy contexts.