Visual Privacy: The Impact of Privacy Labels on Privacy Behaviors Online

Research has consistently shown that websites’ privacy policies fail to inform users, prompting to explore more condensed, visual solutions such as icons and privacy labels. However, we miss efficient and scalable systems to generate such privacy labels and conclusive evidence on their impact on people’s privacy protection behavior. This paper fills these gaps: we present the Visual Privacy browser extension that automatically computes a privacy rating and visualizes it in a privacy label. We studied the impact of those labels on privacy protection behavior in an online experiment ( N = 825). Our results show that the privacy labels shown by Visual Privacy significantly impact a website’s perceived risks and benefits, and that they have an indirect effect on privacy protection behavior. Study participants showed high awareness and acceptance of privacy labels, with 79% of participants recalling the rating shown in a label and over 75% reporting that they would like them to become mandatory.