Visualizing exports of personal data by exercising the right of data portability in the data track - Are people ready for this?

Abstract

A transparency enhancing tool called Data Track has been developed at Karlstad University. The latest stand-alone version of the tool allows users to visualize their data exports. For analyzing the users’ perceptions of the Data Track in regard to transparency features and the concepts of data export and data portability, we have conducted a qualitative user study. We observed that although users had rather little interest in the visualization of derived data activities revealed in the Google location file, they were interested in other kinds of derived data like usage patterns for different service providers. Also, as earlier user studies revealed, we again confirmed that it is confusing for users to differentiate between locally and remotely stored and controlled data. Finally, in spite of being concerned about the security of the data exported to their machines, for exercising data portability rights pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation, most participants would prefer to first export and edit the data before uploading it to another service provider and would appreciate using a tool such as the Data Track for helping them in this context.