Attention towards privacy notifications on web pages

Abstract

A significant number of Internet users is unaware of privacy threats and they might not pay much attention to privacy notifications. It is imperative to create effective but, at the same time, non-distracting notifications about privacy policy of different web services. The article presents an eye-tracking study (N = 16) testing the effectiveness of different common types of privacy notification in capturing and retaining users' attention. Results showed that an non-intrusive notification presented at the top of the web page may be as effective as intrusive notifications in capturing attention. Results are discussed in terms of well-known effects of visual attention distribution on web pages. Present findings also offer practical conclusions for web service developers and publishers.