The TRAPEZE platform provides various security and privacy features. The Privacy Dashboard serves citizens as a gateway to the TRAPEZE platform by offering them management tools for their data security and privacy. As a tool intended to be used by (almost) everyone, regardless of technical equipment or experience, usability is crucial. For this, we pursue two basic concepts: transparency and control.

According to the GDPR, processing personal data must be carried out “in a transparent manner.” As vague as this expression is the concept of software transparency. How can personal data be processed transparently? Disclosing every processing step could lead to a flood of information that overwhelms users, while abstractions and generalizations could lack desired information.

The same is valid for the degree of control offered by the TRAPEZE Privacy Dashboard to its users. Probably everyone encountered at least once a user interface with countless options and inputs to provide. While it is desirable to have many options to express one’s security and privacy preferences, guidance and support contribute to usability as much as the options to choose from reduced to the minimum.

For the first prototype, we defined a simple scenario to showcase the TRAPEZE Privacy Dashboard in which a fictional service (Finder by the company Finder GmbH) processes location information of its users to recommend interesting locations that are nearby. With the help of the dashboard, users can learn who processed what kind of their personal data, for which purposes, and request erasure if necessary.

Interested? See https://dashboard.trapeze-project.eu for a demonstration of the TRAPEZE Privacy Dashboard. Any comments, questions, or feedback? Feel free to contact us.

Contact:
Philip Raschke, philip.raschke@tu-berlin.de