Knowledge-based Individualized Privacy Plans (KIPPs): A Potential Tool to Improve the Effectiveness of Privacy Notices

The current approach to digital privacy in the United States does not facilitate informed consumer decision-making. In fact, the existing “notice and choice” approach often encourages blind consent, in that consumers frequently consent to privacy policies and terms of service agreements without actually knowing the significance of the terms to which they are consenting. A major source of the problem is that consumers have neither the time nor the energy required to read all of the textual notices they encounter on a day-to-day basis (McDonald & Cranor, 2008). In addition, consumers often do not have a valid alternative to accepting a website’s privacy policy. This lack of choice reinforces the ineffectiveness of notices, because in the absence of meaningful choice, consumers are likely to think that learning about a website’s privacy policy is futile. A recent survey we conducted suggests that a lack of consumer background knowledge may also contribute to the problem. A more effective “notice and choice” approach to digital privacy should therefore emphasize consumer knowledge in addition to providing meaningful choices. If consumers remain under-informed, the effectiveness of any future approach will be limited. Thus, in this position paper, we propose a new instrumentality for improving the effectiveness of notices: Knowledge-based Individualized Privacy Plans (KIPPs). The basic goal of KIPPs would be to promote greater comprehension of the significance of privacy notices by altering the framing, presentation, structure, and /or language of notices to better accommodate the needs of individuals with varying degrees of background knowledge. By increasing comprehension, KIPPs could increase the capabilities of consumers to base their website usage decisions on the privacy practices of different companies.