User Perceptions of Sharing, Advertising, and Tracking

Extending earlier work, we conducted an online user study to investigate users’ understanding of online behavioral advertising (OBA) and tracking prevention tools (TPT), and whether users’ willingness to share data with advertising companies varied depending on the type of first party website. We presented results of 368 participant responses across four types of websites an online banking site, an online shopping site, a search engine and a social networking site. In general, we identified that participants had positive responses for OBA and that they demonstrated clear preferences for which classes of information they would like to disclose online. Our results generalize over a variety of website categories containing data with different levels of sensitivity, as opposed to only the medical context as was shown in previous work by Leon et al. In our study, participants’ privacy attitudes significantly dominated their sharing willingness. Interestingly, participants appreciated the idea of user-customized targeted ads and some would be more willing to share data if given prior control mechanisms for tracking protection tools.