"This Website Uses Cookies": Users' Perceptions and Reactions to the Cookie Disclaimer

For many years, cookies have been widely used by websites, storing information about users’ behaviour. While enabling additional functionality and potentially improving user experience, cookies, especially cookies used by third parties for data analysis, can be a threat to users’ privacy. The EU data protection directive, among other prescriptions, require that the website providers inform the users about cookie use on their websites by displaying a so-called cookie disclaimer. It remains an open question, however, what effect does the cookie disclaimer have on the behaviour of users and whether it succeeds in providing them with sufficient information for making an informed decision. We have conducted an explorative user study in order to investigate the users’ perceptions of cookies when seeing the cookie disclaimer, the users’ reactions to such a disclaimer and different factors that influence the users’ decision to leave or continue using the website. In this paper we report on the study results and furthermore discuss the implications of the study results for research into methods for ensuring informed privacy-related decisions of users.

[1]  Melanie Volkamer,et al.  What Deters Jane from Preventing Identification and Tracking on the Web? , 2014, WPES.

[2]  Melanie Volkamer,et al.  Explaining the privacy paradox: A systematic review of literature investigating privacy attitude and behavior , 2018, Comput. Secur..

[3]  Anthony D. Miyazaki.  Online Privacy and the Disclosure of Cookie Use: Effects on Consumer Trust and Anticipated Patronage , 2008 .

[4]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  A Design Space for Effective Privacy Notices , 2015, SOUPS.

[5]  Melanie Volkamer,et al.  Encouraging Privacy-Aware Smartphone App Installation: What Would the Technically-Adept Do , 2016 .

[6]  Dominik Herrmann,et al.  PrivacyScore: Improving Privacy and Security via Crowd-Sourced Benchmarks of Websites , 2017, APF.

[7]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Standardizing privacy notices: an online study of the nutrition label approach , 2010, CHI.

[8]  Kori Inkpen Quinn,et al.  An examination of user perception and misconception of internet cookies , 2006, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[9]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Americans' attitudes about internet behavioral advertising practices , 2010, WPES '10.

[10]  Sonia Chiasson,et al.  User Perceptions of Sharing, Advertising, and Tracking , 2015, SOUPS.

[11]  Aleecia M. McDonald,et al.  Beliefs and Behaviors: Internet Users' Understanding of Behavioral Advertising , 2010 .

[12]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  A Comparative Study of Online Privacy Policies and Formats , 2009, Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

[13]  Kat Krol,et al.  Don't work. Can't work? Why it's time to rethink security warnings , 2012, 2012 7th International Conference on Risks and Security of Internet and Systems (CRiSIS).

[14]  Yang Wang,et al.  What matters to users?: factors that affect users' willingness to share information with online advertisers , 2013, SOUPS.

[15]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Necessary But Not Sufficient: Standardized Mechanisms for Privacy Notice and Choice , 2012, J. Telecommun. High Technol. Law.