The Privacy Paradox: What Happens When Data Sharing is the Default

Written by Sara Lucille Carbonneau and originally published at www.extendedmind.io.

The privacy paradox is a term that was coined by Barry Brown at HP in 2001 to describe the seemingly paradoxical behavior of online users who say they care about their privacy, yet continue to use online products and services that collect, and sometimes share or sell, their personal data.

Research has found that 92% of consumers say they should have control over their online data and 71% claim they would sever ties with companies who gave away their data without permission, however only 16% of people actually do (Hart, 2019). In this blog post, we’ll explore some reasons why people say one thing, but do another when it comes to privacy.

In the cost-benefit analysis, benefits win

In a literature review of privacy studies, Barth and de Jong analyzed the decision making process of people deciding to share private information. They found that people tend to fall into two camps (Barth, 2017):

1. Making their decision based on a risk-benefit calculation
2. Making their decision based on benefits with minimal to no risk calculation

For both groups, the perceived benefits often outweighed the risks and people’s biases for optimism or instant gratification often aided the tipping of the scale in favor of benefits (Barth, 2017). It may also be that the simple desire of consumers to use a product or service puts them in a more favorable position to use rather than refuse the product.

Another important consideration is that benefits may be far easier for consumers to comprehend than risks.

Terms of service and privacy policies are difficult to read and understand

Terms of service and privacy policies are the standard means by which websites, apps, products, and other technological services notify their consumers of their privacy policies and practices. However, the time it would take consumers to read all of these policies is enormous:

“For the average internet user to read the privacy policies of all the websites he or she visited in a single year. Their answer: over 30 workdays, at a national opportunity cost of $781 billion” (Senior, 2019)

And these numbers reflect websites alone, not including apps and products. Most people don’t have the time to dedicate this much time to reading terms of service so it’s no surprise that only 9% of adults claim they always read privacy policies before agreeing to the terms and conditions while 36% admit that they never read privacy policies before agreeing (Pew Research Center, 2019).

Given these numbers, it’s safe to assume that most people simply aren’t fully aware of how much of their privacy they are signing away.

Online privacy is an uphill battle

In the modern age, protecting your online privacy may be too much effort. As danah boyd, founder of Data & Society research institute, has observed we are “​​public by default, private through effort” (Boyd, 2010).

Default settings tend to make our social media conversations public, our locations shared, and browsing histories searchable. To increase our privacy, we usually have to opt-out of defaults, which isn’t always easy.

Researchers at Privolta found that “on average, it would take five times as long to opt out as it did to opt in for data collection” (Ng, 2019). Increasing one’s privacy across apps, websites, and devices would take an enormous amount of time and effort. And questions remain regarding if the effort would be worthwhile:

“There’s a sense that the fight to protect your data is unwinnable,” says Acquisti, of Carnegie Mellon. “You’d have to learn about other tools, it’s costly in time, and it might not even help, because your data is already out there” (Senior, 2019).

Takeaways

Online products usually offer some amount of privacy loss in exchange for their services. And while the benefits are clearly available and you might be in a hurry to get to them,, the privacy policies are often written in complex legalese spanning multiple pages. This makes the privacy information less accessible to potential users, which might explain why benefits so often outweigh risks. And because many products do require some exchange of data for use of services, users may feel that they lack alternative options.

For those who choose to use products and services in spite of privacy concerns, maintaining managing one’s online privacy may require what many people consider an unreasonable amount of time and effort for most people.

The privacy paradox may be less of a paradox and more of a dilemma. If people are overly focused on the benefits and discount the risks, it is likely that the current dissonance between what they say and what they do will persist. Over time, that dissonance may linger or grow if they feel that data collection does not genuinely serve them, which may lead them to be turned off by using a product or service. Product developers should offer features that make it easy for people to access services while minimizing data collection and being transparent about why the data is needed and how it’s used.

Resources

Barth, S., & De Jong, M. D. (2017). The privacy paradox–Investigating discrepancies between expressed privacy concerns and actual online behavior–A systematic literature review. Telematics and informatics, 34(7), 1038–1058. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736585317302022

boyd, d. (2010, March 4). “Privacy, Publicity, and Visibility.” www.danah.org. http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/TechFest2010.html

Brown, B. (2001). Studying the internet experience. HP laboratories technical report HPL, 49.

Hart, K. (2019, April 1). The privacy paradox. Axios. https://www.axios.com/consumer-data-privacy-protection-personal-adeba01c-fce2-43ad-890a-222bdbbb7f4a.html

Ng, A. (2019, December 21). Default settings for privacy — we need to talk. CNET. https://www.cnet.com/news/default-settings-for-privacy-we-need-to-talk/

Pew Research Center. (2019, November 15). 4. Americans’ attitudes and experiences with privacy policies and laws. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-attitudes-and-experiences-with-privacy-policies-and-laws/

Senior, J. (2019, May 18). Opinion | You’re Not Alone When You’re on Google. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/opinion/sunday/google-privacy.html