Language used to track app privacy settings leads to confusion among consumers — ScienceDaily

43 percent of the phone users in the study were confused or unclear about what app tracking means. People commonly mistook the purpose of tracking, thinking it was intrinsic to the app’s function or would provide a better user experience.

Companies use app tracking to deliver targeted advertising to smartphone users.

When iPhone users open an app for the first time, a popup asks if they want to allow the app company to track their activity in other apps. They can choose to ‘Ask app not to track’ or ‘Allow’, as introduced in Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework in April 2021. Android users must access tracking consent via the your phone settings.

If individuals opt out of tracking, Company will no longer be able to track their use of apps and websites on their device, and the data cannot be used for targeted advertising or shared with data intermediaries.

The most common misconception (24 percent) was that tracking refers to sharing the device’s physical location, rather than tracking usage of apps and websites. People thought they should opt-in to tracking from food delivery and pickup services, like Deliveroo, or health and fitness apps, because they believed their location was integral to how the app worked.

While just over half of the participants (51 percent) said they were concerned about privacy or security, including the safety of their data after it was collected, the analysis showed no association between their privacy concern in your daily life and a lower rate. acceptance follow-up.

“We asked people about their privacy concerns, and we expected to see people concerned about protecting their privacy allowing fewer apps to track their data, but we didn’t,” said Hannah Hutton, a graduate researcher in the College of Science of the Bath University. Management. “There were major misunderstandings about what app tracking means. People commonly believed that you needed to enable tracking for the app to work properly.

“Part of the confusion is likely due to a lack of clarity in the wording chosen by companies in tracking instructions, which is easy to misinterpret. For example, when ASOS said ‘We will use your data to provide you with a more personalized ASOS ‘.experience and make our app even more amazing’, it probably came as no surprise that people thought they were opting for additional functionality rather than just more relevant ads.”

Although the main text of the app tracking consent request is standardized, app developers can include a sentence explaining why they are requesting tracking permission, and this can open the door to false or misleading information, either intentionally or unknowingly.

Other misconceptions included believing that consenting to sharing health apps (such as period tracker apps) would mean private data would be shared, or that denying tracking would remove ads from the app.

The study, Exploring user motivations behind iOS app tracking transparency decisions, is published in the proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems and was presented at the CHI23 conference in Hamburg, Germany (April 23-28). It is believed to be the first academic analysis of the decisions people make when faced with trace requests.

Researchers collected data on tracking decisions from 312 study participants (ages 18 to 75) and analyzed the reasons for allowing or denying tracking across a variety of apps, including social media, shopping, health, and delivery. food.

David Ellis, Professor of Behavioral Sciences and co-author, added: “This research further exposes how most consumers are unaware of how their digital data is being used. Every day, millions of us share information with technology companies and Although some of this data is essential for these services to function properly, other data allows them to make money from ad revenue. For example, Meta predicted that they would lose $10 billion from people who refused to track.

“While people are now familiar with the benefits of having PIN numbers and facial recognition to protect our devices, more work is needed to enable people to make transparent decisions about what other data is used for in the digital age.”