The Privacy Paradox - Investigating People's Attitude Towards Privacy in a Time of COVID-19

Abstract

The advent of digital technologies used as a mechanism to deal with the Covid-19 global pandemic, has raised serious concerns around privacy and security issues. Despite these concerns and the potential risk of data misuse, including third party use, countries around the world have pushed the use and proliferation of contact-tracing applications. However, the success of these contact-tracing applications relies on their adoption and use. A well known phenomenon referred to as privacy paradox is defined as the discrepancy between the expressed privacy concern and the actual behaviour of users when it comes to protect their privacy. In this context, this paper presents a study investigating the privacy paradox in the context of a global pandemic. A national survey has been conducted and the data is analysed to examine people's privacy risk perception. The results show inconsistencies between people's privacy concerns and their actual behaviour that is reflected in their attitude shift of sharing their mobile data during a global pandemic. The study also compiles a list of recommendations for policymakers.