Designing and Evaluating Information Visualization Techniques to Increase Privacy Policy Comprehension in Multi-Device Environments

As Canadians use an increasingly wide variety of applications and digital devices for personal and business use, it becomes difficult to understand, remain up to date, and decide which data they should share with an application or on a website. Most often, users are unaware of what information a website or application uses, how or when their data will be shared, and who it will be shared with. Within this project, we are developing algorithms to extract meaningful data from the long, confusing privacy policies users are often required to read and creating visual methods to show this data to users so that they can make more informed decisions about the use of their data, both within an application and across all of the applications used on their devices. By creating privacy policies that are designed specifically for users, Chatham Labs is seeking to transform the way users interact with their devices and make it easier for them to understand and control how their data is used by others.

Faculty Supervisor:

Christopher Collins

Student:

Mariana Shimabukuro

Partner:

Chatham Labs

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Ontario Tech University