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Understanding the privacy-personalization dilemma for web search: a user perspective

Published: 27 April 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Contemporary search engines use a variety of techniques to personalize search results based on users' past queries. While studies have found that users generally prefer personalized search results to non-personalized ones, recent surveys also indicate growing reservations with respect to personalization because of its privacy implications. In this paper, we take a deeper look at privacy considerations of users during web search and explore how users' preferences for privacy and personalization interact when undertaking this activity. We conduct an empirical study over Google search, involving 25 participants in India and their respective web search histories. Our finding is that users exhibit a slight preference for personalization in their search results but are usually willing to "give up" personalization when searching for topics they deem sensitive. We discuss implications of these results for the design of privacy-preserving tools for web search.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2013
    3550 pages
    ISBN:9781450318990
    DOI:10.1145/2470654
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 27 April 2013

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    Author Tags

    1. personalization
    2. privacy
    3. user study
    4. web search

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    CHI '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 392 of 1,963 submissions, 20%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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    Cited By

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    • (2024)"I'm not convinced that they don't collect more than is necessary"Proceedings of the 33rd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3698900.3699057(2797-2812)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2024
    • (2024)An ecosystem for personal knowledge graphs: A survey and research roadmapAI Open10.1016/j.aiopen.2024.01.0035(55-69)Online publication date: 2024
    • (2023)Analysis of Google Ads Settings Over Time: Updated, Individualized, Accurate, and FilteredProceedings of the 22nd Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society10.1145/3603216.3624968(167-172)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2023
    • (2021)”It’s like a puppet master”: User Perceptions of Personal Autonomy when Interacting with Intelligent TechnologiesProceedings of the 29th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization10.1145/3450613.3456820(108-118)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2021
    • (2020)Evaluating the End-User Experience of Private Browsing ModeProceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3313831.3376440(1-12)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2020
    • (2018)Away from prying eyesProceedings of the Fourteenth USENIX Conference on Usable Privacy and Security10.5555/3291228.3291242(159-175)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2018
    • (2018)Comparing Hypothetical and Realistic Privacy ValuationsProceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society10.1145/3267323.3268961(168-182)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2018
    • (2017)Modeling user interests from web browsing activitiesData Mining and Knowledge Discovery10.1007/s10618-016-0482-x31:2(502-547)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
    • (2016)Don’t Let Google Know I’m LonelyACM Transactions on Privacy and Security10.1145/293775419:1(1-25)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2016
    • (2014)Awareness of behavioral tracking and information privacy concern in Facebook and GoogleProceedings of the Tenth USENIX Conference on Usable Privacy and Security10.5555/3235838.3235843(51-67)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2014
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