Those Pesky Privacy Policies: Lorrie Cranor, Carnegie Mellon University

Cookies: Tech Security & Privacy

Does anyone actually read privacy policies? What's in them, and why can't we usually understand them? On our second season finale, we’ll talk with Professor Lorrie Cranor, director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory at Carnegie-Mellon University. The lab brings together more than 100 faculty from across campus to study security and privacy and help shape public policy in those areas. One of her specialties is how humans interact with security and privacy technologies, to make sure the mechanisms we build are not just secure in theory, but are actually things that we can use. Her TED Talk about password security has been viewed more than 1.5 million times. But today, we’ll talk about another pesky aspect of our digital lives – privacy policies, those mysterious terms and conditions we sign off on – often without reading them -- before we can use an app on our smartphone or laptop.