D3.3: Study on Mobile Identity Management

Study on Mobile Identity Management SUMMARY

Summary

Alerting is a problem if it has to be rather frequent and the environmental circumstances as well as the size of the devices make this problem even bigger for handheld units. Anonymisation provides a reasonable solution to this problem because it makes alerting uncalled for in most cases. Some users may still want to use privacy preference settings and such settings might benefit from larger displays providing a good overview of different preference details. However, it was noted above that users might use ordinary computers for the privacy preference settings as such settings presumably are done only on rare occasions. A computer could provide a lot of extra help such as digitalised tutorials. 

The questionnaires have demonstrated the risk of relying on a lingua franca (English) for crucial privacy information on the Internet even for Internet users who are used to visiting English web sites. Privacy policies in machine-readable form constitute a solution because it will be possible to present these in the user’s own language, if he has a browser equipped with a suitable interpretator. In the same time one has to be aware that the privacy threats in a net-worked society are sometimes very intricate. To make ordinary users of varying linguistic and technical skills able to utilise privacy agents will not be merely a user interface problem but will have to be considered in a broader context of how informational self-determinacy are discussed and taught in society.

The difficulties encountered in section 4.2 when adjusting a graphical user interface made for computer screens (the PRIME mock-ups) to mobile phones had to with the difference of size between the mobile’s smaller screen and the computer’s monitor. The user could, for instance, more easily loose oversight of the program on a smaller screen and there is a risk that the IDM windows will hide other important information. The smaller screen also requires that informational texts be shortened. The standard for information display recently given by Article 29 Data Protection Working Party suggests limiting the demand for immediate display to the very core information plus a link to deeper and more complete layers. This is a reasonable standard for information display. However, for the design of mobile phone screens, every layout, especially of the deeper and more complete layers, must be evaluated. It must be possible for the service provider’s system to know what the presentation preferences of the user are, or else the client-side has to be able to take over the structuring of the presentation.