Abstract

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has imposed strict requirements for data sharing, one of which is informed consent. A common way to request consent online is via cookies. However, commonly, users accept online cookies being unaware of the meaning of the given consent and the following implications. Once consent is given, the cookie “disappears”, and one forgets that consent was given in the first place. Retrieving cookies and consent logs becomes challenging, as most information is stored in the specific Internet browser’s logs. To make users aware of the data sharing implied by cookie consent and to support transparency and traceability within systems, we present a knowledge graph (KG) based tool for personalised cookie consent information visualisation. The KG is based on the OntoCookie ontology, which models cookies in a machine-readable format and supports data interpretability across domains. Evaluation results confirm that the users’ comprehension of the data shared through cookies is vague and insufficient. Furthermore, our work has resulted in an increase of 47.5% in the users’ willingness to be cautious when viewing cookie banners before giving consent. These and other evaluation results confirm that our cookie data visualisation approach and tool help to increase users’ awareness of cookies and data sharing.

中文翻译：

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你的饼干盒里有什么？用知识图解释网络cookie的成分

摘要

《通用数据保护条例》(GDPR) 对数据共享提出了严格的要求，其中之一就是知情同意。在线请求同意的常见方式是通过 cookie。然而，通常情况下，用户在不了解所给予同意的含义以及以下含义的情况下接受在线 cookie。一旦获得同意，cookie 就会“消失”，人们会忘记一开始就获得了同意。检索 cookie 和同意日志变得具有挑战性，因为大多数信息都存储在特定互联网浏览器的日志中。为了让用户了解 cookie 同意隐含的数据共享并支持系统内的透明度和可追溯性，我们提出了一种基于知识图 (KG) 的工具，用于个性化 cookie 同意信息可视化。KG 基于 OntoCookie 本体，它以机器可读的格式对 cookie 进行建模，并支持跨域的数据可解释性。评估结果证实，用户对通过cookie共享的数据的理解模糊且不充分。此外，我们的工作还使用户在同意之前查看 cookie 横幅时保持谨慎的意愿增加了 47.5%。这些和其他评估结果证实，我们的 cookie 数据可视化方法和工具有助于提高用户对 cookie 和数据共享的认识。