Decoding the Privacy Policies of Assistive Technologies

Date

2024-10-22

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Crawford, Kirk, Yi Xuan Khoo, Asha Kumar, Helena Mentis, and Foad Hamidi. ?Decoding the Privacy Policies of Assistive Technologies.? Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference, W4A ?24, October 22, 2024, 87?95. https://doi.org/10.1145/3677846.3677850.

Rights

Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0 Deed

Abstract

As assistive technologies (ATs) have evolved, they have become increasingly connected. However, these increasing connections pose significant privacy challenges, especially when user privacy is described using complex privacy policies. Our study decodes the privacy policies of 18 ATs to understand how data collection and processing are communicated with users. We find that (1) AT privacy policies are structured to offer legal protections to their companies and not always to protect user privacy, (2) AT privacy policies are absent protections for individuals with disabilities, (3) AT policies are inconsistent when describing data storage, handling, and security methods, (4) AT policies often do not differentiate between essential and non-essential data collection, and (5) there is often a lack of transparency in AT policies around third-party data sharing. These findings reveal that AT privacy policies overlook and underestimate a user?s acceptable privacy risks. We conclude our study by discussing AT design implications.