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Privacy Perspectives | What Misconceptions Do Consumers Have About Privacy? Related reading: IAB's Diligence Platform looks to ease adtech privacy law compliance

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Control of personal information in the digital space, and particularly on mobile devices, presents a unique design challenge. Most people aren’t aware that their personal data is being collected and shared. Many users don’t take the time to validate their expectations and most never read privacy policies, only becoming aware of such concerns when something happens that doesn’t meet their expectations—such as seeing their friend’s picture in a Facebook ad or seeing banner ads that match their most recent purchase.

When people do become aware and their expectations are violated, trust in the brand is eroded. We can leverage existing technology to create new experiences around personal data collection that are both transparent and provide control. But before we can begin to think about design solutions, we need to understand consumers’ current experience and expectations of how their personal information is handled and safeguarded. And our research has shown that the experience is currently riddled with misconceptions.

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Through our research with consumers in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, we found that consumer privacy expectations often do not map to reality. In the online interaction between consumers and companies, consumers do expect that companies access their personal data in order to complete transactions—and in that case, their expectations match reality. However, user expectations and reality diverge when it comes to companies’ storage and use of consumers’ personal data. A nearly total mismatch occurs when it comes to sharing people’s personal data: Companies do far more of it than most consumers realize.

This lack of awareness leaves consumers vulnerable. If they don’t realize that their data is being accessed and shared, they are unlikely to try to look for controls to set their preferences. While people understand that they can control what personal information other consumers see, they have little awareness of their ability to control how companies use, store and share their data.

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What consumers do expect is that information stays in silos. Aware of all or some of the possible online data collectors—such as local service, social network, photo or shopping sites—users think that their data remains only with those sites. They don’t expect that their personal information will be transferred between them. Most consumers are also not aware of ad networks that may gather data across all sites they visit.

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Consumers believe that companies only have access to limited personal information. In some ways, users feel that this is a form of protection, since the “real” me is made up of many components. Consumers only give each online site data about themselves that is relevant to that transaction or service and assume that sites don’t know the “whole” me.

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People also expect they will have anonymity on sites until they provide authentication. For example, consumers believe that they are anonymous when shopping on the Internet until they choose to give their personal information. They believe that their provider or website only knows their location when they “Check In.” And while people expect to provide a password when accessing mail via a browser, they do not expect to need to enter a password when using their mail app.

Users operate under these false privacy expectations every day. False user expectations are often challenged in their own time—for many users, surprising information eventually surfaces naturally in forms we previously mentioned, like a friend’s picture in a Facebook ad or banner ads that match their most recent purchase. This new information changes how the user feels about the company, about themselves and about their role in keeping their information private.

In my next post, I will explore what happens when users DO realize their privacy expectations have been violated. How do consumers react to this new information, and what does that mean for businesses trying to gain their trust?

2 Comments

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  • comment Cindy Compert • Jun 11, 2013
    Ilana, very interesting article. Did you have more details on your research methodology? Any specific statistics you can share? 
  • comment Ilana Westerman • Jun 19, 2013
    Cindy, our Trust:It™ Research Program has been running from 2007-2013 and we have conducted a number of different types of research including: 
    
    1. Qualitative methodologies -- Ethnography, usability studies, eyetracking, desirability studies, and longitudinal studies. 721 1:1 sessions 1 hour - 3 hours in duration; longitudinal studies 1 week - 3 months in duration.
    2. Quantitative methodologies:  Surveys and quantitative usability.  10344 respondents overall.