On-line privacy and consent: a dialogue, not a monologue

With the move to deliver services on-line, there is a reduction in opportunities for a service user to discuss and agree to the terms of the management of their personal data. As the focus is turned to on-line technologies, the design question becomes one of privacy protection not privacy negotiation and conflict resolution. However, the findings from a large privacy survey and the outputs of several follow-up focus groups reflect a need for privacy systems to also support different types of privacy and consent dialogues. These dialogues are used to support the resolution of privacy dilemmas through the selection of effective privacy protection practices. As the face to face contact between service user and service provider decreases, the potential for these types of dialogues to become increasingly important grows. The work presented in this paper forms the initial part of a study to learn more about the types of privacy dialogue and negotiation that should be deployed in on-line services. In this position paper we outline the types of privacy and consent dialogues that service providers and service users want to have. We also explore how a socio-technical approach should ideally form the basis of the design and implementation of any dialogue system.