PrivacySmart: Automatic and Transparent Management of Privacy Policies

Privacy policies and the use of cookies on websites serve important functions but also raise concerns regarding user privacy and tracking. In order to address these concerns and adhere to legal requirements, web service providers utilize pop-ups to obtain user consent based on the notice-and-choice principle. However, a significant issue arises when users accept all policies without thoroughly reading or comprehending them, resulting in difficulties in managing and recalling accepted policies across various websites. To tackle this challenge, we propose PrivacySmart: an innovative system that handles privacy and cookie policy pop-ups for users as they navigate and access online services, all while taking their privacy preferences into account. The system comprises two essential components: a plug-in that necessitates installation on users’ browsers and a smartphone application that consolidates all accepted policies from different plug-ins. This system empowers users by granting them control over the policies they have agreed to and the corresponding websites, while avoiding them the policies management overhead. By implementing the tool as a Firefox extension, we have conducted thorough evaluations and obtained promising results from the experiments.