Stop annoying me!

Abstract

Privacy nudges are a "soft-paternalistic" method to nudge (instead of force) users to make more informed privacy decisions. While previous work has shown that privacy nudges are effective in encouraging users to adjust their privacy settings, current privacy nudges are considered to be annoying. Previous research found that modalities influence the effectiveness of responses to system messages. Hence, with the aim of improving the usability of privacy nudges, we conducted both a lab and a 3-day field study to empirically investigate how users perceive receiving privacy nudges using different modalities (combinations of visual, vibration, audio and speech). Our results suggest that app designers should implement privacy nudges which cede the decision of their delivery time to the users themselves. Most importantly, our findings reveal that to minimize annoyance, intrusiveness and interruption, while still being read, low priority notifications should not be delivered using salient modalities (i.e., audio or speech).1