Abstract:
Privacy policies play an important part in informing users about their privacy concerns by operating as memorandums
of understanding (MOUs) between them and online services providers. Research suggests that these policies are infrequently
read because they are often lengthy, written in jargon, and incomplete, making them difficult for most users to understand. Users
are more likely to read short excerpts of privacy policies if they pertain directly to their concern. In this paper, a novel approach
is proposed that reduces the amount of text a user has to read. It does so by using a domain ontology and natural language
processing (NLP) to identify key areas of the policies that users should read to address their concerns and take appropriate action.
By using the ontology to locate key parts of privacy policies, average reading times were substantially reduced from 8 - 12
minutes to 45 seconds
Comments