Related papers: Deceptive Cookies: Consent by Design -- A Mixed Me…
Deceptive patterns, dark patterns, and manipulative user interfaces (UI) are a widely used design strategy that manipulates users to act against their own interests in pursuit of shareholder aims. These patterns may particularly affect…
Current consumer-protection debates focus on the powerful new data-analysis techniques that have disrupted the balance of power between companies and their customers. Online tracking enables sellers to amass troves of historical data, apply…
Personal data are not discrete in socially-networked digital environments. A user who consents to allow access to their profile can expose the personal data of their network connections to non-consented access. Therefore, the traditional…
In our data-centric world, most services rely on collecting and using personal data. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aims to enhance individuals' control over their data, but its practical impact is not well understood.…
Conflicts of interest often arise between data sources and their users regarding how the users' information needs should be interpreted by the data source. For example, an online product search might be biased towards presenting certain…
Mobile gaming apps are woven into children's daily lives. Given their ongoing cognitive and emotional development, children are especially vulnerable and depend on designs that safeguard their well-being. When apps feature manipulative…
Does more information elicit users compliance and engagement, or the other way around? This paper explores the relationship between content strategy and user experience (UX). Specifically, we examine how the amount of information provided…
Web tracking by ad networks, social networks, and other third parties is privacy-invasive. To protect users' privacy an increasing number of countries are adopting new privacy laws. However, a major reason why their application on the web…
Many online experiments exhibit dependence between users and items. For example, in online advertising, observations that have a user or an ad in common are likely to be associated. Because of this, even in experiments involving millions of…
Websites with hyper-partisan, left or right-leaning focus offer content that is typically biased towards the expectations of their target audience. Such content often polarizes users, who are repeatedly primed to specific (extreme) content,…
Data aggregators collect large amount of information about individual users and create detailed online behavioral profiles of individuals. Behavioral profiles benefit users by improving products and services. However, they have also raised…
Access to smart meter data offers system-wide benefits but raises significant privacy concerns due to the personal information it contains. Privacy-preserving techniques could facilitate wider access, though they introduce privacy-utility…
The paper discusses the legal requirements and implications of the processing of information and personal data for advertising purposes, particularly in the light of the "Planet49" decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the…
From scientific experiments to online A/B testing, the previously observed data often affects how future experiments are performed, which in turn affects which data will be collected. Such adaptivity introduces complex correlations between…
Tracking pixels are used to optimize online ad campaigns through personalization, re-targeting, and conversion tracking. Past research has primarily focused on detecting the prevalence of tracking pixels on the web, with limited attention…
The privacy implications of third-party tracking is a well-studied problem. Recent research has shown that besides data aggregators and behavioral advertisers, online social networks also act as trackers via social widgets. Existing cookie…
Choice decisions made by users of online applications can suffer from biases due to the users' level of engagement. For instance, low engagement users may make random choices with no concern for the quality of items offered. This biased…
Internet users highly rely on and trust web search engines, such as Google, to find relevant information online. However, scholars have documented numerous biases and inaccuracies in search outputs. To improve the quality of search results,…
With the increasing concerns around privacy and the enforcement of data privacy laws, many websites now provide users with privacy controls. However, locating these controls can be challenging, as they are frequently hidden within multiple…
In the current connected world - Websites, Mobile Apps, IoT Devices collect a large volume of users' personally identifiable activity data. These collected data is used for varied purposes of analytics, marketing, personalization of…