Data dashboards are designed to help users manage data collected about them. However, prior work showed that exposure to some dashboards, notably Google’s My Activity dashboard, results in significant decreases in perceived concern and increases in perceived benefit from data collection, contrary to expectations. We theorize that this result is due to the fact that data dashboards currently do not sufficiently “connect the dots” of the data food chain, that is, by connecting data collection with the use of that data. To evaluate this, we designed a study where participants assigned advertising interest labels to their own real activities, effectively acting as a behavioral advertising engine to “connect the dots.” When comparing pre- and post-labeling task responses, we find no significant difference in concern with Google’s data collection practices, which indicates that participants’ priors are maintained after more exposure to the data food chain (differing from prior work), suggesting that data dashboards that offer deeper perspectives of how data collection is used have potential. However, these gains are offset when participants are exposed to their true interest labels inferred by Google. Concern for data collection dropped significantly as participants viewed Google’s labeling as generic compared to their own more specific labeling. This presents a possible new paradox that must be overcome when designing data dashboards, the generic paradox, which occurs when users misalign individual, generic inferences from collected data as benign compared to the totality and specificity of many generic inferences made about them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted countries around the world to introduce smartphone apps to support disease control efforts. Their purposes range from digital contact tracing to quarantine enforcement to vaccination passports, and their effectiveness often depends on widespread adoption. While previous work has identified factors that promote or hinder adoption, it has typically examined data collected at a single point in time or focused exclusively on digital contact tracing apps. In this work, we conduct the first representative study that examines changes in people's attitudes towards COVID-19-related smartphone apps for five different purposes over the first 1.5 years of the pandemic. In three survey rounds conducted between Summer 2020 and Summer 2021 in the United States and Germany, with approximately 1,000 participants per round and country, we investigate people's willingness to use such apps, their perceived utility, and people's attitudes towards them in different stages of the pandemic. Our results indicate that privacy is a consistent concern for participants, even in a public health crisis, and the collection of identity-related data significantly decreases acceptance of COVID-19 apps. Trust in authorities is essential to increase confidence in government-backed apps and foster citizens' willingness to contribute to crisis management. There is a need for continuous communication with app users to emphasize the benefits of health crisis apps both for individuals and society, thus counteracting decreasing willingness to use them and perceived usefulness as the pandemic evolves.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled the development of smartphone applications to assist disease management. Many “corona apps” require widespread adoption to be effective, which has sparked public debates about the privacy, security, and societal implications of government-backed health applications. We conducted a representative online study in Germany (n = 1003), the US (n = 1003), and China (n = 1019) to investigate user acceptance of corona apps, using a vignette design based on the contextual integrity framework. We explored apps for contact tracing, symptom checks, quarantine enforcement, health certificates, and mere information. Our results provide insights into data processing practices that foster adoption and reveal significant differences between countries, with user acceptance being highest in China and lowest in the US. Chinese participants prefer the collection of personalized data, while German and US participants favor anonymity. Across countries, contact tracing is viewed more positively than quarantine enforcement, and technical malfunctions negatively impact user acceptance.