Re: Privacy; investigating the accessibility of online legal documents in relation to the privacy paradox

Website Terms of Service and Privacy Policy documents are the delivery methods employed by online services to inform internet users of how information is treated on their platform. When users fail to read or understand these documents, many issues can arise. These issues take shape in the form of unwillingness to use services, misunderstandings of how online data is treated, and/or user concerns for personal privacy. Currently, the leading factors influencing user motivation to read these documents include (but are not limited to) document length, complicated language, and time required to read. To encourage users to engage with these documents, this research investigates the delivery methods service providers use to present these legal documents online. During the course of this investigation, the proposal of a new method of presenting website Privacy Policies to users is explored. This tool, ‘Re: Privacy’, was developed with the aim of increasing user awareness of online data treatment, whilst minimising the factors that dissuade users from reading the official document. Published alongside Re: Privacy is a comprehensive analysis of website legal documents and user understanding of these documents. This analysis also provides an investigation into user understanding of current website legal documents, and how user understanding can be improved.