Thursday, April 9, 2015

Privacy and Enhanced Personalization

      Privacy and enhanced personalization are two very similar but also very different subjects. With the popularization of the internet came a whole new way of using and sharing data. The internet allowed for a high concentration of personalized systems to exist in the same place. This change also created a distrust between people and the internet. Internet technology was so new that people where very untrustworthy of it. They would not put any personal information online. Today, there are more sources of user information. Assumptions can be drawn from mouse movements, mouse clicks, eye movement, facial expression, physiological data and location data. 
      Researchers conducted a survey that would measure privacy concerns and practices of internet users. The aim of the research was "to reconcile the goals and methods of user modeling and personalization with privacy considerations, and to strive for best possible personalization with boundaries set by privacy". They administered a survey that gave internet users the option to rank there experience with features of personalized websites. These questions allowed for people to truly reveal the different ways they interact with these sites and all of the concerns that they may or may not have thought of.
     According to the data, 90% of Internet users are concerned about their information being used by businesses for a purpose that they are not aware of. This is one of the main reasons most people are hesitant with revealing sensitive information about themselves. The results also revealed that people are more sensitive about certain details more than others. The research shows that more people are willing to disclose basic demographic information such as age, sex, education level, and marital status. The survey also revealed other factors involved in the willingness of internet users to disclose information about themselves. Trust in the websites that is asking for the information and also the reputation of the website are strong influencers. Some users even admitted to providing false or fictitious information about themselves. These results are proof that the use personal data may cause problems for those personalized systems that depends on user disclosing data about themselves. Personalized websites are becoming more and more popular all across the world. This has created the need for privacy laws to protect internet users and there information.

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