Private browsing: An inquiry on usability and privacy protection

Xianyi Gao, Yulong Yang, Huiqing Fu, Janne Lindqvist, Yang Wang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Private browsing is a feature in web browsers to prevent local users from gaining information about browsing sessions. However, it is not clear how well people interpret private browsing's functionalities and what are the privacy gains from using it. Towards studying people's understanding of private browsing, we conducted a survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our survey results show that (1) one third of our participants were not aware of this privacy-enhancing feature, and (2) for people who knew or even used this feature, they had various misconceptions which could put them at risk. In the end, we provide design suggestions to help address these misconceptions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages97-106
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781450331487
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 3 2014
Externally publishedYes
Event13th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, WPES 2014, in Conjunction with the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ACM CCS 2014 - Scottsdale, United States
Duration: Nov 3 2014 → …

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
ISSN (Print)1543-7221

Conference

Conference13th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, WPES 2014, in Conjunction with the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ACM CCS 2014
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityScottsdale
Period11/3/14 → …

Keywords

  • Incognito browsing
  • InPrivate browsing
  • Private browsing
  • User privacy
  • Web privacy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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