Investigating Effects of Control and Ads Awareness on Android Users' Privacy Behaviors and Perceptions

Through a controlled online experiment with 447 Android phone users using their own devices, we investigated how empowering users with information-disclosure control and enhancing their ads awareness affect their installation behaviors, information disclosure, and privacy perceptions toward different mobile apps. In the 3 (control: no, low, high) x 2 (ads awareness: absent, present) x 3 (app context: Wallpaper, BusTracker, Flashlight) fractional factorial between-subjects experiment, we designed privacy notice dialogs that simulate real Android app pre-installation privacy-setting interfaces to implement and manipulate control and ads awareness. Our findings suggest that empowering users with control over information disclosure and enhancing their ads awareness before installation effectively help them make better privacy decisions, increase their likelihood of installing an app, and improve their perceptions of the app. Implications for designing mobile apps' privacy notice dialogs and potential separate-ads-control solutions are discussed.