How Users Consider Web Tracking When Seeking Health Information Online
This addresses privacy risks for health information seekers, but is incremental as it builds on existing research about user behavior and tracking.
The study investigated how users protect their privacy when seeking health information online, finding that their limited and ineffective efforts are linked to poor understanding of web tracking mechanisms.
Health information websites offer instantaneous access to information, but have important privacy implications as they can associate a visitor with specific medical conditions. We interviewed 35 residents of Canada to better understand whether and how online health information seekers exercise three potential means of protection against surveillance: website selection, privacy-enhancing technologies, and self-censorship, as well as their understanding of web tracking. Our findings reveal how users' limited initiative and effectiveness in protecting their privacy could be associated with a missing or inaccurate understanding of how implicit data collection by third parties takes place on the web, and who collects the data. We conclude that to help health information seekers better protect their online privacy, we may need to shift privacy awareness efforts from what information is collected to how it is collected.