“I need it now”: Improving website usability by contextualizing privacy policies

Abstract

Internet privacy policies are complex and difficult to use. In the eyes of end-users, website policies appear to be monolithic blocks of poorly structured texts that are difficult to parse when attempting to retrieve specific information. In an increasingly privacy-aware society, end-users must be able to easily access privacy policies while navigating a website’s pages and readily understand the relevant parts of the policy. We propose a structured methodology to improve web design and increase user’s privacy awareness. This systematic approach allows policy makers to effectively and efficiently reshape their current policies by structuring policies according to the subject that is relevant to specific user interaction contexts, making them more usercentered and user-friendly. The methodology is built upon prior work in privacy policy analysis and navigation context design.