Using Privacy Indicators to Nudge Users into Selecting Privacy Friendly Applications

Abstract: In the play store today, users are shown download count, app rating, reviews, screenshots etc. when deciding to download an application, and it’s shown very conveniently. If the users however are interested in viewing privacy in- formation about the application, it is multiple clicks away and there is no default in how to display it. This is where privacy indicators come in handy. With privacy indicators, data can be analyzed and displayed to the user in a way they understand, even if they don’t understand what the data itself means and what is dangerous. This however comes with the challenge of deciding what is dangerous and what is not. This report creates and implements an app store with added privacy infor- mation displayed to the user in the form of a privacy indicator and some detailed information about each application. To test the effectiveness of the privacy indicator, a small scale study was conducted where it was discovered that users who were not already interested in privacy didn’t pay much at- tention to it, while those who were took it more into account when deciding to download applications.