Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter XI
Privacy Statements as a Means
of Uncertainty Reduction in
WWW Interactions
Irene Pollach
Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria
abstraCt
Grounded in uncertainty reduction theory, the present study analyzes the content of 50 privacy poli-
cies from well-known commercial Web sites with a view to identifying starting points for improving
the quality of online privacy policies. Drawing on traditional content analysis and computer-assisted
textual analysis, the study shows that privacy policies often omit essential information and fail to com-
municate data handling practices in a transparent manner. To reduce Internet users' uncertainty about
data handling practices and to help companies build stable relationships with users, privacy policies
need to explain not only the data collection and sharing practices a company engages in but also those
practices in which companies do not engage. Further, more exact lexical choice in privacy policies
would increase the transparency of data handling practices and, therefore, user trust in World Wide
Web (WWW) interactions. The results also call for less verbose texts and alternatives to the current
narrative presentation format.
introduCtion
building, commerce, and information retrieval
have exacerbated this problem. Online retailers
can track users' site behavior in order to create
user profiles, enhance the functionality of their
Web sites, and target offerings to customers on
subsequent Web site visits (Caudill & Murphy,
2000). Although online retailers might use the
The growth of information technology and its
enhanced capacity for data mining have given
rise to privacy issues for decades (Mason, 1986).
The advent of the Internet and its unprecedented
opportunities for communication, community
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