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Automated privacy negotiations with preference uncertainty

Automated privacy negotiations with preference uncertainty
Automated privacy negotiations with preference uncertainty

Many service providers require permissions to access privacy-sensitive data that are not necessary for their core functionality. To support users’ privacy management, we propose a novel agent-based negotiation framework to negotiate privacy permissions between users and service providers using a new multi-issue alternating-offer protocol based on exchanges of partial and complete offers. Additionally, we introduce a novel approach to learning users’ preferences in negotiation and present two variants of this approach: one variant personalised to each individual user, and one personalised depending on the user’s privacy type. To evaluate them, we perform a user study with participants, using an experimental tool installed on the participants’ mobile devices. We compare the take-it-or-leave-it approach, in which users are required to accept all permissions requested by a service, to negotiation, which respects their preferences. Our results show that users share personal data 2.5 times more often when they are able to negotiate while maintaining the same level of decision regret. Moreover, negotiation can be less mentally demanding than the take-it-or-leave-it approach and it allows users to align their privacy choices with their preferences. Finally, our findings provide insight into users’ data sharing strategies to guide the future of automated and negotiable privacy management mechanisms.

Automation, Multi-issue negotiation, Privacy management
1387-2532
Filipczuk, Dorota
582b73c6-5445-4679-88b5-15d8e1234679
Baarslag, Tim
a7c541d8-8141-467b-a08c-7a81cd69920e
Gerding, Enrico H.
d9e92ee5-1a8c-4467-a689-8363e7743362
Schraefel, M. C.
ac304659-1692-47f6-b892-15113b8c929f
Filipczuk, Dorota
582b73c6-5445-4679-88b5-15d8e1234679
Baarslag, Tim
a7c541d8-8141-467b-a08c-7a81cd69920e
Gerding, Enrico H.
d9e92ee5-1a8c-4467-a689-8363e7743362
Schraefel, M. C.
ac304659-1692-47f6-b892-15113b8c929f

Filipczuk, Dorota, Baarslag, Tim, Gerding, Enrico H. and Schraefel, M. C. (2022) Automated privacy negotiations with preference uncertainty. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 36 (2), [49]. (doi:10.1007/s10458-022-09579-1).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Many service providers require permissions to access privacy-sensitive data that are not necessary for their core functionality. To support users’ privacy management, we propose a novel agent-based negotiation framework to negotiate privacy permissions between users and service providers using a new multi-issue alternating-offer protocol based on exchanges of partial and complete offers. Additionally, we introduce a novel approach to learning users’ preferences in negotiation and present two variants of this approach: one variant personalised to each individual user, and one personalised depending on the user’s privacy type. To evaluate them, we perform a user study with participants, using an experimental tool installed on the participants’ mobile devices. We compare the take-it-or-leave-it approach, in which users are required to accept all permissions requested by a service, to negotiation, which respects their preferences. Our results show that users share personal data 2.5 times more often when they are able to negotiate while maintaining the same level of decision regret. Moreover, negotiation can be less mentally demanding than the take-it-or-leave-it approach and it allows users to align their privacy choices with their preferences. Finally, our findings provide insight into users’ data sharing strategies to guide the future of automated and negotiable privacy management mechanisms.

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Accepted/In Press date: 27 July 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 26 August 2022
Published date: 1 October 2022
Additional Information: Funding Information: This work is supported by a grant from the EPSRC for Meaningful Consent in the Digital Economy project (EP/K039989/1) and is part of the Vidi project COMBINE (VI.Vidi.203.044) which is (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Dorota Filipczuk is funded by the EPSRC, award ref.: 1807923. All data supporting this study are openly available from the University of Southampton repository at https://doi.org/10.5258/SOTON/D1323. Study approved by the University of Southampton’s Ethics Committee (ref.: ERGO/FPSE/18082). The authors wish to thank all of the participants and our anonymous reviewers for their comments. Funding Information: This work is supported by a grant from the EPSRC for Meaningful Consent in the Digital Economy project (EP/K039989/1) and is part of the Vidi project COMBINE (VI.Vidi.203.044) which is (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Dorota Filipczuk is funded by the EPSRC, award ref.: 1807923. All data supporting this study are openly available from the University of Southampton repository at https://doi.org/10.5258/SOTON/D1323 . Study approved by the University of Southampton’s Ethics Committee (ref.: ERGO/FPSE/18082). The authors wish to thank all of the participants and our anonymous reviewers for their comments. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).
Keywords: Automation, Multi-issue negotiation, Privacy management

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 470574
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/470574
ISSN: 1387-2532
PURE UUID: 9687f94a-d04e-4f9f-82f0-f4abf6d66a4e
ORCID for Tim Baarslag: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1662-3910
ORCID for Enrico H. Gerding: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7200-552X
ORCID for M. C. Schraefel: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-9061-7957

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 13 Oct 2022 16:36
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:02

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Contributors

Author: Dorota Filipczuk
Author: Tim Baarslag ORCID iD
Author: Enrico H. Gerding ORCID iD
Author: M. C. Schraefel ORCID iD

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