Comparing the Configuration of Privacy Settings on Social Network Sites Based on Different Default Options

Abstract

Current privacy research in the context of social network sites is based on the assumption that all entered personal information is public available by default. Literature from the fields of default settings and sharing behavior in social network sites lacks empirical insights how restrictive privacy default settings, that do not share personal information without the explicit decision of the users, influence their behavior. To gain empirical insight, a social network site privacy interface prototype with 14 different privacy settings was built to investigate in an experimental setting the influence of the preselected option on (1) the configuration behavior of the privacy settings, (2) the deviation from the default option, and (3) the size of deviation from the default option. In general, the results of our test show that users having restrictive privacy options as the preselected option significantly differ from users having permissive default privacy options because they are more influenced by the status quo bias and anchoring effect.