A Value Sensitive Design Investigation of Privacy Enhancing Tools in Web Browsers

In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Privacy concern has been identified as a major factor hindering the growth of e-business. Recently, various privacy-enhancing tools (PETs) have been proposed to protect the online privacy of Internet users. However, most of these PETs have been designed using an ad hoc approach rather than a systematic design. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation of an end-use PET using a Value Sensitive Design approach. We propose an integrated design of a Privacy Enhancing Support System (PESS) with three proposed tools, namely privacy-enhancing search feature (PESearch), privacy-enhancing control for personal data (PEControl), and privacy-enhancing review for sharing the ratings and reviews of websites' privacy practices (PEReview). This system could enhance the interactivity of Internet users' privacy experiences, increase users' control perceptions over their personal information, and reduce their privacy concerns. An empirical evaluation of PESearch, PEControl, and PEReview revealed that novices felt the most important aspect of the tools for downloading and usage intentions was its usefulness; most experts felt the tool met the design principles as specified. As Internet-based tracking and profiling technologies increasingly expand the ability for e-commerce vendors to collect, store, process and exploit personal data, privacy concern has been identified as a major factor hindering the growth of e-commerce [32]. Indeed, a Pew Internet Project survey found that 85% of adults believed it was " very important " for them to control access to their personal information [35]. The concerns center on the confidentiality of accumulated consumer personal information and potential risks that consumers experience over the possible breach of confidentiality [5]. The need to protect privacy has led to many initiatives, some behavioral and some technical. Behavioral initiatives generally include providing assurances through privacy seals [24], government regulations [58], or addressing individuals' concerns for information privacy, which have been shown to affect trust [36]. While these approaches to protecting privacy are interesting, this paper focuses on an IT artifact that provides one technical solution to the online privacy issue. This approach is in line with a recent review of the privacy literature that highlights the …