arXiv subjects

Varun Shiri

Publications and source records attributed to Varun Shiri.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Beyond Privacy Labels: How Users Perceive Different Information Sources for Understanding App's Privacy Practices

Despite having growing awareness and concerns about privacy, technology users are often insufficiently informed of the data practices of various digital products to protect themselves. Privacy policies and privacy labels, as two conventional ways of communicating data practices, are each criticized for important limitations -- one being lengthy and filled with legal jargon, and the other oversimplified and inaccurate -- causing users significant difficulty in understanding the privacy practices of the products and assessing their impact. To mitigate those issues, we explore ways to enhance privacy labels with the relevant content in complementary sources, including privacy policy, app reviews, and community-curated privacy assessments. Our user study results indicate that perceived usefulness and trust on those information sources are personal and influenced by past experience. Our work highlights the importance of considering various information needs for privacy practice and consolidating different sources for more useful privacy solutions.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

"Your Privacy is Your Responsibility": Understanding How Users Collectively Navigate the Complexity of Privacy on Quora

In the current technology environment, users are often in a vulnerable position when it comes to protecting their privacy. Previous efforts to promote privacy protection have largely focused on top-down approaches such as regulation and technology design, missing opportunities to understand how to empower users through bottom-up, collective approaches. Our paper addresses this by analyzing what and how privacy-related topics are discussed on Quora. We identified a wide range of interconnected privacy topics brought up by the users, including privacy risks and dangers, protection strategies, organizational practices, and existing laws and regulations. Our results highlight the interplay among the individual, technological, organizational, and societal factors affecting users' privacy attitudes. Moreover, we provide implications for designing community-based tools to better support users' collective efforts in navigating privacy, tools that incorporate users' diverse privacy-related behaviors and preferences, simplify information access and sharing, and connect designers and developers with the user community.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Motivating Users to Attend to Privacy: A Theory-Driven Design Study

In modern technology environments, raising users' privacy awareness is crucial. Existing efforts largely focused on privacy policy presentation and failed to systematically address a radical challenge of user motivation for initiating privacy awareness. Leveraging the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), we proposed design ideas and categories dedicated to motivating users to engage with privacy-related information. Using these design ideas, we created a conceptual prototype, enhancing the current App Store product page. Results from an online experiment and follow-up interviews showed that our design effectively motivated participants to attend to privacy issues, raising both the threat appraisal and coping appraisal, two main factors in PMT. Our work indicated that effective design should consider combining PMT components, calibrating information content, and integrating other design elements, such as visual cues and user familiarity. Overall, our study contributes valuable design considerations driven by the PMT to amplify the motivational aspect of privacy communication.

cs.HC↗