Towards New Privacy Regulations in Europe: Users’ Privacy Perception in Recommender Systems

Despite the fact that recommender systems are becoming increasingly popular in every aspect of the web, users might hesitate to use these personalization-based services in return of their personal information if they believe their privacy is compromised in any possible way. While new privacy regulations in Europe bring more transparency and control over data collection to users, this study aims to provide a better understanding of the users’ perception over privacy in recommender systems domain over several aspects such as behavioral preferences, privacy preferences, trust, data ownership and control over own data through an on-line survey. The results indicate that the majority of the respondents consider that recommender systems violate user privacy in different ways. Further, the results indicate that increased control and perceived sense of ownership over one’s own data may help to decrease the negative attitudes towards recommender systems and providers and to re-instate and increase users’ trust. However, the findings also indicate that users’ trust may be hard to re-establish in cases where the thought of “apparently”/in theory go hand in hand with more transparency and user control will in reality/in practice not lead to drastic changes.