Disclosures in privacy policies: Does "notice and consent" work?

Rishab Bailey, Smriti Parsheera (), Faiza Rehman () and Renuka Sane
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Smriti Parsheera: National Institute of Public Finance and Policy
Faiza Rehman: National Institute of Public Finance and Policy

Working Papers from National Institute of Public Finance and Policy

Abstract: This paper evaluates the quality of privacy policies of five popular online services in India from the perspective of access and readability. We ask - do the policies have specific, unambiguous and clear provisions that lend themselves to easy omprehension? We also conduct a survey among college students to evaluate how much do users typically understand of what they are signing up for. We find that the policies studied are poorly drafted, and often seem to serve as check-the-box compliance of expected privacy disclosures. Survey respondents do not score very highly on the privacy policy quiz. The respondents fared the worst on policies that had the most unspecified terms, and on policies that were long. Respondents were also unable to understand terms such as "third party", "affiliate" and "business-partner". The results suggest that for consent to work, the information offered to individuals has to be better drafted and designed.

Pages: 45
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
Note: Working Paper 246, 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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