While Internet users claim to be concerned about online
privacy, their behavior rarely reflects those concerns. In
this paper we investigate whether the availability of comparison
information about the privacy practices of online
merchants affects users’ behavior. We conducted our study
using Privacy Finder, a “privacy-enhanced search engine”
that displays search results annotated with the privacy policy
information of each site. The privacy information is
garnered from computer-readable privacy policies found at
the respective sites. We asked users to purchase one nonprivacy-
sensitive item and then one privacy-sensitive item
using Privacy Finder, and observed whether the privacy information
provided by our search engine impacted users’
purchasing decisions (participants’ costs were reimbursed,
in order to separate the effect of privacy policies from that
of price). A control group was asked to make the same purchases
using a search engine that produced the same results
as Privacy Finder, but did not display privacy information.
We found that while Privacy Finder had some influence on
non-privacy-sensitive purchase decisions, it had a more significant
impact on privacy-sensitive purchases. The results
suggest that when privacy policy comparison information
is readily available, individuals may be willing to seek out
more privacy friendly web sites and perhaps even pay a premium
for privacy depending on the nature of the items to
be purchased.