Abstract
The only way to be aware of the risks and threats of Facebook, the most commonly used social networking site in the world and Turkey, is to be a careful user changing the default settings or simply not to have a Facebook account. In Turkey, there is still no study in which personal information shared though social networking sites has been evaluated in terms of privacy. For this reason, the findings obtained of this study have a great importance in the general picture of the current situation and drawing attention to the risks of the issue in Turkey where there are no legal arrangements effectively protecting the users from such sites. This study aims to investigate the Facebook privacy of information professionals who are members of KUTUP-L, and to determine the sensitivity and level of awareness of information professionals in Turkey. Facebook user profiles of 400 information professionals, all KUTUP-L members, have been analyzed in a study examining 32 different privacy settings. A privacy score has been calculated for each user, and the relations between privacy results have been analyzed. The findings at the end of the study show that information professionals in Turkey do pay attention to privacy, and most of the users change the default settings in order to protect their personal information.
Highlights
Social networks have an important place among the tools which are used both as digital information infrastructures in which personal or institutional ideas, messages and news are produced, shared and consumed, and as an interface to access new information
The main reason for the need to be conscious about the use of social networking sites and attaching importance to privacy is the misuse of personal information by social networking sites or the misuse of the viewable content by other users
According to the distribution of percentage and frequency related to the protection of privacy shown in Table 1, more than 95% of Facebook users, who are KUTUP-L members, do not share personal information namely address, phones, political views, birthday, inspirational people, sports and religious views
Summary
Social networks have an important place among the tools which are used both as digital information infrastructures in which personal or institutional ideas, messages and news are produced, shared and consumed, and as an interface to access new information. There are risks and responsibilities that may leave the users in difficult situations with regard to the protection of information on social networking sites and the privacy of personal data. The increase of security risks due to the proliferation of information sharing services on the internet, increasing amount of information, and the rapid development in information and communication technologies has caused the protection of privacy to be one of the most controversial and worrisome issues (King & Raja, 2012). The service provider can change the content of the agreement without having the confirmation of the user (Facebook, 2012a)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
