An Empirical Investigation of Privacy Awareness and Concerns on Social Networking Sites

Abstract

Privacy affects every user who exchanges information over the Internet. In the past few years, the growth of information on social networks (such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln) has increased exponentially. Companies are harvesting this information with and without the knowledge ofindividuals. While the exchange ofinformation and seamless interaction between individuals and groups has become an easy task, issues related to this exchange, such as information privacy and security, have created new challenges. This study investigated respondents' attitudes towards privacy on social networking sites. In addition, the study sought to ascertain whether sociodemographic variables and knowledge of privacy issues influence attitudes and privacy concerns towards using social computing sites. Data analysis includes descriptive profile analysis, and statistical validation of attitudes and privacy concerns by means of correlation, regression, and cluster analysis. There was a significant relationship between privacy awareness and knowledge based on information provided by respondents. Most socio-demographic variables did not show significant effects on information privacy concerns. Implications of the findings are discussed. Further research is needed to investigate individual concerns on specific information that is being collected, stored, and shared on popular social networking sites.

Using Crowd Sourcing to Analyze Consumers' Response to Privacy Policies of Online Social Network and Financial Institutions at Micro Level

“…It shows older users have greater concerns about their privacy. This finding supports Hazari and Brown's (2013) argument that privacy concern increases with age. Our study results indicate that females are more concerned about their information privacy, which supports the position of Nowak and Phelps (1992) but contradicts Hazari and Brown (2013), who stated that gender difference is not a significant factor in determining users' levels of privacy concern.…”

“…The survey Consumer action "Do not track" (2013) results showed that 87% of their participants strongly agreed that they have the right to make choices regarding their information privacy and want more control. According to Hazari & Brown (2013), the employed users of social networks websites are more likely to control their privacy preferences than the unemployed users because it can have a negative influence on their employment status and relationships. Young and Quan-Haase (2009) found that students made some effort to control their personal information in their profiles to protect themselves.…”

“…Gross and Acquisti (2005) found that only 1.2% and 0.06% of their study participants changed default profile searchability and visibility, respectively. Hazari and Brown (2013) stated that users post a great deal of content to customize their experience using different services in a way that negatively affected their privacy. Further, some studies have shown that users do not read privacy notices or policies provided by the web services that they use (Chaianuchittrakul, 2013;Lin et al, 2012).…”

Twibel: A matter of Internet privacy

“…The default setting for a Twitter account is that all tweets are public-that is, they can be read by anyone with or without a Twitter account (Hazari & Brown, 2013). A user may change the account settings to be protected, which means that he must approve each person who wants to subscribe to (i.e., read) his or her tweets.…”

Online Expression, Personal Cybersecurity Costs, and the Specter of Cybercrime

“…Sheehan (2002) found that users' education and age correlate with their level of concern about online privacy. Hazari and Brown (2013) studied whether demographic variables can affect Internet users' privacy concerns and, thus, their attitudes toward using social networking sites. In contrast to the results from Sheehan and from Regan, Fitzgerald, and Balint, their research found that age was not correlated with online privacy concerns.…”