RE: Intended usage notification

Trust is not a binary operation on all aspects.

The thought process goes thus:

- I trust this site not to lie.

- This site just asked me if I wanted to be advertised at based on my location: reject.

- This site just asked me if I wanted to display a map of my vicinity: allow.

What the current arrangement does is forces users to have a reasonably good conceptual model of what is going on in the web page in order to make an informed decision when the prompt is offered.  I don't believe that an average user is capable of building a useful model.

The current model leads to users to think: ``the last time I clicked "reject" the site didn't work.''  This has the effect of training users to blindly click accept.

I'm merely suggesting a low-cost improvement to this training problem.

Cheers,
Martin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Hickson [mailto:ian@hixie.ch]
> Sent: Thursday, 26 March 2009 3:06 PM
> To: Thomson, Martin
> Cc: Greg Bolsinga; Doug Turner; public-geolocation@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Intended usage notification
> 
> On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Thomson, Martin wrote:
> >
> > This is not intended to be binding, so liars will be free to do that.
> 
> Then what's the point?
> 
> The good sites aren't the ones that are going to be a privacy risk for
> users. The ones that are the problem are the malicious sites that are
> going to, I dunno, sell the location of rich people using their site to
> organised thieves. And those are the very sites who will lie.
> 
> In other words, there are two kinds of sites, and two kinds of prompts:
> 
>                     Prompts that are honest    Prompts that are lies
> 
>    Sites that are   The prompt doesn't         Won't happen, since
>   trustworthy and   matter, since the user     the sites are honest
> won't do anything   won't be screwed           (by definition)
> bad with the data   either way
> 
>   Sites that want   Won't happen, since        The prompt doesn't
>     to abuse your   the sites are dishonest    matter, since it is
>     location data   (by definition)            a lie
> 
> 
> 
> > This establishes a common expectation from users.
> 
> That's the problem. It leads users to believe a prompt that can just as
> easily be a lie.
> 
> It would be the equivalent of teaching users to give their credit cards
> to
> random strangers based purely on the excuse the strangers give, instead
> of training users to look for other clues, such as the reputation of
> the
> site, to make their decision.
> 
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.
> fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._
> ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-
> .;.'

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Received on Thursday, 26 March 2009 22:17:46 UTC