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On the Difficulties of Incentivizing Online Privacy through Transparency: A Qualitative Survey of the German Health Insurance Market

Maass, Max ; Walter, Nicolas ; Herrmann, Dominik ; Hollick, Matthias (2018)
On the Difficulties of Incentivizing Online Privacy through Transparency: A Qualitative Survey of the German Health Insurance Market.
Conference or Workshop Item, Secondary publication

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Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
Type of entry: Secondary publication
Title: On the Difficulties of Incentivizing Online Privacy through Transparency: A Qualitative Survey of the German Health Insurance Market
Language: English
Date: 11 December 2018
Place of Publication: Darmstadt
Book Title: Wirtschaftsinformatik 2019
Abstract:

Today, online privacy is the domain of regulatory measures and privacy-enhancing technologies. Transparency in the form of external and public assessments has been proposed for improving privacy and security because it exposes otherwise hidden deficiencies. Previous work has studied privacy attitudes and behavior of consumers. However, little is known on how organizations react to measures that employ public "naming and shaming" as an incentive for improvement. We performed the first study on this aspect by conducting a qualitative survey with 152 German health insurers. We scanned their websites with PrivacyScore.org to generate a public ranking and confronted the insurers with the results. We obtained a response rate of 27%. Responses ranged from positive feedback to legal threats. Only 12% of the sites - mostly non-responders - improved during our study. Our results show that insurers struggle due to unawareness, reluctance, and incapability, and demonstrate the general difficulties of transparency-based approaches.

URN: urn:nbn:de:tuda-tuprints-82462
Classification DDC: 000 Generalities, computers, information > 004 Computer science
300 Social sciences > 330 Economics
Divisions: 20 Department of Computer Science > Sichere Mobile Netze
DFG-Graduiertenkollegs > Research Training Group 2050 Privacy and Trust for Mobile Users
Date Deposited: 11 Dec 2018 12:02
Last Modified: 13 Feb 2024 14:57
URI: https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/id/eprint/8246
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