AwEE the AwarE Extension - Enhancing Privacy Awareness by Leveraging Gamification Principles

In today's digital society, companies regularly collect large volumes of personal data from their users, raising serious privacy and ethical concerns. Yet, despite many cases of large data breaches being documented, most users remain unaware of the real-time flow of their information while they use online services. This thesis presents the design and development of AwEE, a software conceived to address this gap by improving privacy awareness among users, incorporating gamification principles. The first step of this work was studying privacy-related research literature which revealed a number of exsiting software programs. Some of these (FPMON, FPNET, Minos) aim to improve users' perception of how they are profiled while browsing; others (JShelter, NoScript) aim to enhance users' privacy during navigation, trying to prevent profiling from happening. Then, attention turned to the concept of "gamification", meaning the use of game design mechanics in non-gaming contexts, and examples of its applications. The main reference point from this perspective was the Octalysis Framework, a well known scheme defining fundamental psychological motivators that drive human actions. Bearing this background in mind, AwEE was developed as a browser extension, available for both Firefox and Chromium. It allows users to monitor outgoing HTTP requests while browsing the web and flags those directed to “Bad Hosts” – companies fined or under investigation for questionable data practices – using an internal blacklist to maintain a serverless approach. To increase users' engagement, various gamification elements were integrated. Among these, the tool includes the possibility for users to choose their own personal avatar, which also allows them to receive dynamic feedback as they navigate, simultaneously stimulating a sense of ownership and unpredictability; meanwhile the graphical interface includes counters and statistics, which involve users by updating them in real-time on what is happening while they browse. A preliminary evaluation of AwEE was conducted in an academic context involving a total of 120 participants among high school and bachelor students. The outcome of such assessment highlights both extension's usability and ability to shift users’ perceptions about data transfers to big tech companies, demonstrating the potential of combining privacy tools with gamification. Possible technical improvement would be to explore alternative methods to automatize the recognition of "Bad Hosts" or evaluate the introduction a server-based backend. Additional and more complex gamification mechanics could also be implemented, allowing AwEE to evolve as a powerful tool for promoting privacy awareness while keeping users motivated and engaged in safeguarding their personal data.