Cookies, Lies and Consent Enrico Gerding

What is this talk about? The Biggest Lie

Solution 1: Read all terms and conditions Alex Hern: "I read all the small print on the internet and it made me want to die " /15/i-read-all-the-small-print-on-the-internet

Issues It is impossible to read all terms and conditions Even if we read them, they are clouded in legal language and difficult to understand what it means in practice There is no choice: there is no negotiation of the terms; it's `take it or leave it'

Consequences We do not know what we agree to Consent becomes meaningless Leads to mistrust in businesses Privacy Index

Why is this important? Increasing amount information is being collected – Browsing – Social media – Mobile devices – Internet of Things Potential privacy issues Often not clear what information is collected and for which purpose

Samsung SmartTV Samsung SmartTV has a voice command feature. The privacy policy reads: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party,” Source: The Daily Beast, 5 Feb 2015

Mobile App Permissions University of Southampton Campus App has access to: – Device & app history Includes browsing history and information about other apps – Identity Includes accounts – Contacts Reading all contacts – Location – Photos/Media/Files Can access files on device including photos and videos taken – Device ID & Call Information Phone number, whether calls are `active', remote number connected to phone, etc

Solution 2: Change the Law EU Cookie Law, adopted May 2011 The goal was to `make consumers aware of how information about them is collected and used online, and give them a choice to allow it or not' Issues: – Not many people understand what cookies are – Still not clear how information is being used – Often there is no choice

Towards Meaningful Consent in the Digital Economy How can we make consent more meaningful? Multi-disciplinary EPSRC-funded project – ECS: m.c schraefel (PI), Enrico Gerding, Tim Baarslag, Richard Gomer, Dion Kitchener, Anna Soska – Economics: Michael Vlassopoulis, Helia Marreiros

Towards Meaningful Consent in the Digital Economy Research questions: Understand to what extent people care about privacy, and in which context Can we make consent more meaningful than talking about cookie technologies? Can consent be automated using agent-based technologies? Can consent be negotiated?

Current Situation Service Provider User Yes/No Privacy Policy

Agent-Based Privacy Negotiation (1) Service Provider User Privacy Preferences Agent Negotiation

Agent-Based Privacy Negotiation (2) UserAgent Service Provider Preference Elicitation Negotiation Determine which information is needed to reach an optimal outcome No cognitive costs but risky if user model is inaccurate Find the right time to ask the user for feedback Find the most information- revealing questions to ask Incurs cognitive costs Provider Model User Model

Example Suppose the agent can make 3 different offers to the service provider Offer 1 Offer 2 Offer 3 User Model Provider Model Probability Utility Acceptance Probability = 0.7 Acceptance Probability = 0.5 Acceptance Probability = 0.2

Trade offs Agent can make an offer, but if accepted is bound to the offer – Risk Agent can ask the user to get more accurate information about its preferences but this incurs a cognitive cost

Pandora’s problem

Pandora’s Policy Example

Pandora’s Policy With these indexes, Pandora follows these simple rules: SELECTION RULE: If a box is to be opened, it should be the closed box with highest index. STOPPING RULE: Terminate search whenever the maximum sampled reward exceeds the index of every closed box Pandora’s policy is optimal in terms of expected reward We adapted Pandora’s Policy for the privacy negotiation setting Tim Baarslag and Enrico H. Gerding. Optimal incremental preference elicitation during negotiation. In Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). AAAI Press, 2015

Negotiating Consent in Practice

Development of mobile app which collects potentially sensitive user information Users receive monetary reward in return for granting permissions (data) Field studies with real users and their data Research questions: – How privacy sensitive are users in practice (as opposed to what they say they are) – User bother vs accuracy – Effectiveness of agent based approach

Conclusions Nobody reads terms and conditions Privacy an ever-important issue Meaningful consent is an interaction issue CS solutions: – Agent-based approaches – HCI Website