Factors In Building Transparent, Usable And Comprehensive User Privacy Policy System

Improving associations between users and web-based systems can make computing tasks easier. User-to-system associations include the amount of time spent using the system, quality and quantity of data involved, and the user's trust in the system. The strength of these associations is an integral part of a user's online experience and can be improved with better understanding of the interactions involved. One class of user-to-system interaction, namely understanding and controlling the release of personal information, can heavily influence a user's trust associations with a system. However, most users do not read the statements and others do not understand them completely. These statements tend to be lengthy, non-intuitive, and not written in layman's terms. System owners can modify the way privacy policy statements are developed, presented, and how users have control over the use of their personal information to improve user-to-system trust and improve their experience and effectiveness using the systems. We analyze several factors that affect user-to-system trust with respect to privacy management and provide an overview of techniques used in building privacy statements and privacy controls. We review existing design models and factors in the context of privacy management and propose methods to improve transparency and control for users. We argue that implementing these models can strengthen user-to-system trust associations and can result in more effective system use.