Privacy Challenges and Approaches to the Consent Dilemma

Abstract

Privacy decisions and their underlying tradeoffs are genuine fields of study in economics. This master thesis builds on the well recorded findings that people give away more private information than they would like to reveal according to their pre-decisional statements. This so called ‘privacy paradox’ is one political justification for renewing outdated privacy laws towards a more privacy protecting approach. Since May 2018 the ‘General Data Protection Regulation’ (GDPR) is legally enforceable in Europe and intends to give Europeans citizens’ the legislative frame to protect their data. By changing the decision design from opting out of sharing data, to opting in allowing the use of private information, the regulation aims at giving Europeans thought-out control over their data. However, only few reads the privacy regulations of service providers and are able to process the information towards well-balanced decisions. This results in inflationary consent-giving of users and works against the actual political intention of enabling an informed consent giving. This master thesis intends in unfolding this ‘consent dilemma’ and finding solutions towards better informed decision-making.

Keywords: data protection, GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, European Union, Big Data