Moving from opt-out to opt-in? Online information disclosure and privacy policies in an era of personalisation

Abstract

The advent of social networks has led to new questions in the area of privacy. Facebook continuously works on its privacy control panel to help simplify its notoriously confusing privacy options. However, organisations have criticised Facebook's approach to privacy, namely providing its members with opt-out choices. Why is Facebook forcing members to deny permission after sharing personal information with third parties, rather than asking explicit consent in advance? We examine this question from an integrated social scientific and legal approach by elaborating Facebook's privacy policy and by using the results from the research project 'Cultural Profile and Information Database' (CUPID).