Disclosing Social and Location Attributes on Social Media: The Impact on Users’ Privacy

Abstract

AbstractPrevious literature summarizes that within social media (SM) more information about users’ identity may be disclosed in comparison to their initial intention, imposing various privacy implications. Privacy implications may arise due to the combination of social and location attributes disclosure. The revelation of a substantial amount of users’ information can lead to users’ identification due to new affiliations created. The main concern of the paper in hand is to discuss the social and location attributes which can play an essential role when implemented in designing privacy-aware information systems in the subject area of SM applications. Privacy requirements are being analyzed as organizational goals during the designing phase, thus, our analysis focuses on the interrelation among privacy requirements and social and location attributes. Interrelations that derive from social and location implications will be further analyzed in a case study, in which a user is presented throughout a potential online routine. The main contribution of this paper is to represent potential privacy implications that derive from both social and location attribute disclosure within SM, when the respective technical privacy requirements are not satisfied.KeywordsSocial attributesLocation attributesPrivacy requirementsSocial software engineeringSocial media