research-article

Private Browsing: an Inquiry on Usability and Privacy Protection

Authors:

Janne Lindqvist,

Yang WangAuthors Info & Claims

WPES '14: Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society

Pages 97 - 106

https://doi.org/10.1145/2665943.2665953

Published: 03 November 2014 Publication History

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.

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Cited By

Spilinek MJorgensen J(2025)Creepy or convenient?: Consumer perceptions of privacy and ad exposure on social mediaItalian Journal of Marketing10.1007/s43039-025-00107-zOnline publication date: 26-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-025-00107-z
Abdo JZeadally SDemerjian J(2024)Compartmentalization-by-Design: Usability-Aware Web PrivacyComputer10.1109/MC.2023.334105057:7(39-52)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MC.2023.3341050
Snyder PKarami SEdelstein ALivshits BHaddadi HCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)Pool-partyProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620634(7091-7105)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620634
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Private Browsing: an Inquiry on Usability and Privacy Protection
1. Security and privacy
  1. Human and societal aspects of security and privacy
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy
    1. Privacy policies
  2. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WPES '14: Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society

November 2014

218 pages

ISBN:9781450331487

DOI:10.1145/2665943

General Chair:
Gail-Joon Ahn
Arizona State University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Anupam Datta
Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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 the author(s) 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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SIGSAC: ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit, and Control

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 03 November 2014

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Funding Sources

National Science Foundation

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CCS'14

Sponsor:

SIGSAC

CCS'14: 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

November 3, 2014

Arizona, Scottsdale, USA

Acceptance Rates

WPES '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 26 of 67 submissions, 39%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 106 of 355 submissions, 30%

Upcoming Conference

CCS '25

Sponsor:
sigsac

ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

October 13 - 17, 2025

Taipei , Taiwan

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Citations

Cited By

Spilinek MJorgensen J(2025)Creepy or convenient?: Consumer perceptions of privacy and ad exposure on social mediaItalian Journal of Marketing10.1007/s43039-025-00107-zOnline publication date: 26-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-025-00107-z
Abdo JZeadally SDemerjian J(2024)Compartmentalization-by-Design: Usability-Aware Web PrivacyComputer10.1109/MC.2023.334105057:7(39-52)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MC.2023.3341050
Snyder PKarami SEdelstein ALivshits BHaddadi HCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)Pool-partyProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620634(7091-7105)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620634
Nisenoff ASharma RFeamster NCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)User awareness and behaviors concerning encrypted DNS settings in web browsersProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620412(3117-3133)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620412
Fassl MPonticello ADabrowski AKrombholz K(2023)Investigating Security Folklore: A Case Study on the Tor over VPN PhenomenonProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36101937:CSCW2(1-26)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610193
Shusas ESkeba PBaumer EForte A(2023)Accounting for Privacy Pluralism: Lessons and Strategies from Community-Based Privacy GroupsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581331(1-12)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581331
Malkin N(2023)Contextual Integrity, Explained: A More Usable Privacy DefinitionIEEE Security & Privacy10.1109/MSEC.2022.320158521:1(58-65)Online publication date: Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/MSEC.2022.3201585
Balendra UMaqsood S(2023)User Motivations of Secure Web BrowsingHCI for Cybersecurity, Privacy and Trust10.1007/978-3-031-35822-7_28(419-434)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-35822-7_28
Ruth KKumar DWang BValenta LDurumeric ZBarakat CPelsser CBenson TChoffnes D(2022)Toppling top listsProceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3517745.3561444(374-387)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517745.3561444
Ruth KFass AAzose JPearson MThomas ESadowski CDurumeric ZBarakat CPelsser CBenson TChoffnes D(2022)A world wide view of browsing the world wide webProceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3517745.3561418(317-336)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517745.3561418
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