Privacy Behavior Research Articles

Social media privacy concerns: trusting beliefs and risk beliefs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to build a research model that examines social media privacy concerns (SMPC) in relation to users’ trusting beliefs and risk beliefs.Design/methodology/approachAn instrument with eight constructs (SMPC: collection, SMPC: secondary usage, SMPC: errors, SMPC: improper access, SMPC: control, SMPC: awareness, trusting beliefs and risk beliefs) was developed and administered to subjects from a mid-sized university in the USA. Collected data were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling.FindingsThe results showed that three of the six SMPC (i.e. secondary usage, improper access and awareness) were negatively and significantly associated with users’ trusting beliefs. In addition, three of the six SMPC (i.e. collection, errors and improper access) were positively and significantly associated with users’ risk beliefs.Practical implicationsPractical implications were aimed at the social media sites to design simple and straightforward privacy policy statements that are easy to understand; to safeguard users’ online privacy behaviors; and to develop mechanisms to protect personal information.Originality/valueThis study enhances the literature by contributing to a generalized knowledge of SMPC of users as they relate to their trusting beliefs and risk beliefs.

Explaining Diversity and Conflicts in Privacy Behavior Models

ABSTRACT Technological development and increasing personal data collection and utilization raise the importance of understanding individuals’ privacy behavior. Privacy behavior denotes the willingness to disclose personal data for services utilizing these data. The literature presents various privacy behavior models (PBMs). However, the research is incoherent, with inconsistencies among models. Therefore, the application and subsequent development of PBMs are challenging. Different background theories are used for model construction, and studies have been conducted in distinct application domains. We studied whether the models’ inconsistencies could be explained by these differences. Our in-depth analysis of PBMs was based on a systematic literature review of the most often cited key studies. Our findings indicate that the choice of theories and the application domains do not explain inconsistencies; instead, the models are often of an ad hoc type and constructed in an eclectic way. These results imply the need for more consistent research on privacy behavior.

TRANSFORMATION OF SECRECY AND PRIVACY: SOCIAL MEDIA BEHAVIOR OF TURKISH AND KYRGYZ STUDENTS

In this study, an effort will be made to show how social network users manage the issue of personal secrecy and privacy, how they view the matter of others’ personal secrecy and privacy, and especially the issue of one’s privacy being learned by someone else with the help of social networks in the digitalizing society. In the study, a survey was used as the data collection tool based on the quantitative approach. Survey questions consisted of the measures of individuals’ social networking behaviors and attitudes, the demographics category, and the level of privacy and secrecy scale. The data obtained from participating university students in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey were analyzed statistically. Accordingly, the biggest sources of anxiety for students on the Internet were viruses, identity theft and hackers. Females’ level of anxiety and concern in social media was higher than that of male students. Turkish students were observed to pay more respect for personal information, legal privacy and security of Internet sites on social media platforms than Kyrgyz students. In terms of privacy behavior, Turkish students were found to be more open than Kyrgyz students. On the other hand, Kyrgyz students tended to hide their true identity more in social media.

Addressing The Privacy Paradox through Personalized Privacy Notifications

Privacy behaviors of individuals are often inconsistent with their stated attitudes, a phenomenon known as the "privacy paradox." These inconsistencies may lead to troublesome or regrettable experiences. To help people address these privacy inconsistencies, we propose a personalized privacy notification approach that juxtaposes users' general privacy attitudes towards specific technologies and the potential privacy riskiness of particular instances of such technology, right when users make decisions about whether and/or how to use the technology under consideration. Highlighting the privacy inconsistencies to users was designed to nudge them in making decisions in a way that aligns with their privacy attitudes. To illustrate this approach, we chose the domain of mobile apps and designed a privacy discrepancy interface that highlights this discrepancy between users' general privacy attitudes towards mobile apps and the potential privacy riskiness of a particular app, nudging them to make app installation and/or permission granting decisions reflecting their privacy attitudes. To evaluate this interface, we conducted an online experiment simulating the process of installing Android apps. We compared the privacy discrepancy approach with several existing privacy notification approaches. Our results suggest that the behaviors of participants who used the privacy discrepancy interface better reflected their privacy attitudes than the other approaches.

An investigation of relationships among privacy concerns, affective responses, and coping behaviors in location-based services

Although information privacy has been extensively investigated in the information systems discipline, research heavily focuses on cognitive frameworks and underestimates the influence of affect on users’ privacy behaviors. Psychological literature demonstrates that affect plays a significant role in individuals’ decisions in risky situations. This study aims to explore associations between cognitive factors, affective responses, and coping behaviors in the context of privacy threats. For this purpose, we conducted a laddering interview with 56 users of location-based services. Elements elicited by an emerging coding procedure were mapped by their causal relations as described in interviews. The results revealed idiosyncratic associations among privacy concerns, affects, and coping behaviors, which implies that privacy concerns can result in different coping behaviors according to the affects following the concern. Thus, the result suggests that cognition-affect appraisals can offer a reliable framework for explaining users’ privacy behaviors. This study proposes a new direction for the cognition-affect perspective in information privacy research by providing an alternative approach that reflects both cognition and affects to explain coping behaviors.

“Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?” Examining COPPA Compliance at Scale

Abstract We present a scalable dynamic analysis framework that allows for the automatic evaluation of the privacy behaviors of Android apps. We use our system to analyze mobile apps’ compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), one of the few stringent privacy laws in the U.S. Based on our automated analysis of 5,855 of the most popular free children’s apps, we found that a majority are potentially in violation of COPPA, mainly due to their use of thirdparty SDKs. While many of these SDKs offer configuration options to respect COPPA by disabling tracking and behavioral advertising, our data suggest that a majority of apps either do not make use of these options or incorrectly propagate them across mediation SDKs. Worse, we observed that 19% of children’s apps collect identifiers or other personally identifiable information (PII) via SDKs whose terms of service outright prohibit their use in child-directed apps. Finally, we show that efforts by Google to limit tracking through the use of a resettable advertising ID have had little success: of the 3,454 apps that share the resettable ID with advertisers, 66% transmit other, non-resettable, persistent identifiers as well, negating any intended privacy-preserving properties of the advertising ID.

Processing privacy information and decision-making for smartphone apps among young German smartphone users

ABSTRACTWhile privacy behaviour is generally equated with self-disclosure, other forms of behaviour that potentially infringe an individual’s privacy, such as downloading an app, are being neglected by research. We seek to fill this gap by modelling app decision-making within a dual-process model of the attitude–behaviour relationship and the role of privacy attitudes in two kinds of information processing: (1) spontaneous, heuristic processes that rely on automated attitude activation and (2) elaborate, cognitive processes that rely on behavioural intentions to guide behaviour. We used a quasi-experimental design to investigate app decision-making processes for N = 89 participants in N = 254 decision-making cases. Participants were asked to provide information on their actions after downloading three apps on their smartphones over a 2-week period. We could identify two distinct types of information processing and found support for attitude activation and, to a lesser degree, intentions as requirements for the influence of privacy attitudes on app decision-making.

A study on personal information protection behavior in easy payment service: focused on protection motivation theory

Background/Objectives: This paper deals with the easy payment service among fin-Tech, a hot market worldwide.'Fintech' refers to a service that combines 'finance' and 'technology' as it is called, or a company that conducts such services.Methods/Statistical analysis: In order to understand the behavior of users of personal information in the simple payment service centered on twenties, I conducted empirical studies using the theory of protection motivation.Findings: The perceived vulnerability of the possibility of personal information infringement and the self - efficacy related to self - confidence of being able to keep personal information were found to have a positive effect on privacy behavior. However, the variables of perceived severity did not have a significant effect on privacy behavior.Improvements/Applications: it is necessary to conduct research on people of various age groups in future research and to carry out research by selecting detailed items within the simple payment service framework.

Attitudes and practices of Canadian academic librarians regarding library and online privacy: A national study

Libraries have always been places where individuals feel free to explore new ideas and seek out information in the pursuit of creative and intellectual growth. Fear of exposure or surveillance could threaten an individual's inclination to search for and access information. Understandably then, privacy is understood to be a core professional responsibility of librarians. This study builds on a national report and a qualitative study, completed in the United States, which explored librarians' attitudes on privacy. Adding a Canadian voice to the literature, this study examines survey results from academic librarians in Canada on their perceptions and attitudes related to library practices and online privacy behaviors. Overall, Canadian academic librarians believe that protecting patron privacy and educating patrons about issues related to online privacy is important. However, many Canadian academic librarians doubt that libraries are doing all they can to protect patron privacy. Academic librarians stand to gain knowledge and understanding of peer attitudes toward online privacy, as well as how patron privacy is being advocated for and protected on university campuses across Canada. The results will guide future library policies and programming aimed at creating an environment where privacy rights are protected and patrons can make informed choices about their online actions.

Nothing to hide, nothing to lose? Incentives and disincentives to sharing information with institutions online

ABSTRACTWhat incentives and disincentives do Internet users weigh as they consider providing information to institutional actors such as government agencies and corporations online? Focus group participants list several benefits to sharing information including convenience, access to information, personalization, financial incentives, and more accurate health information, but also recognize that not all sharing may be in their interest. Disincentives to sharing include skepticism, distrust, and fears of discrimination. Decisions about sharing are related to the information type, the context in which information is revealed, and the institution to which they are – or think they are – providing information. Significantly, many participants were mistrustful of both governmental and corporate actors. Participants displayed awareness of privacy risks, but frequently mischaracterized the extent to which information could be aggregated and mined. They displayed resignation towards privacy violations, suggesting that they perceived little control over their ability to protect their privacy, which may influence their privacy behaviors. This calls into question the privacy calculus, as individuals misunderstand the risks of their information provision and do not believe opting out of information-sharing is possible.

Information privacy in online social networks: Uses and gratification perspective

This research investigates privacy attitudes and behaviors in online social networks (OSN). For this purpose, two separate studies were conducted. Study 1 employed the theory of uses and gratifications to identify the motives for using OSN. Surveying 918 OSN users and employing the content analysis method, the predominant motives for using OSN were identified as: 1-relationship maintenance; 2-entertainment; 3-relationship building; and 4-information seeking. Study 2, inspired by the framework of Smith, Dinev, & Xu’s (2011), investigates both the antecedents to and outcomes of privacy concerns. Survey data were collected from 521 OSN users. The results of regression analysis suggested that the motives for OSN use do not serve as antecedents of privacy concerns. Minimal impact of the motives on privacy concerns indicated that the degree of users’ concerns for privacy is not related to the reasons why people use OSN. The findings also showed that privacy concerns did not inhibit self-disclosure, whereas the motives fostered it. No dichotomy was observed between privacy concerns and the use of privacy protective measures. Overall, the findings regarding the outcomes of privacy concerns indicated that privacy concerns align with privacy behaviors; therefore a privacy paradox or inconsistency between privacy attitudes and behavior was not supported.

Community-Structured Evolutionary Game for Privacy Protection in Social Networks

Social networks have attracted billions of users and supported a wide range of interests and practices. Users of social networks can be connected with each other by different communities according to professions, living locations, and personal interests. With the development of diverse social network applications, academic researchers, and practicing engineers pay increasing attention to the related technology. As each user on the social network platforms typically stores and shares a large amount of personal data, the privacy of such user-related information raises serious concerns. Most research on privacy protection relies on specific information security techniques such as anonymization or access control. However, the protection of privacy depends heavily on the incentive mechanisms of social networks, like users’ psychological decisions on security execution and socio-economic considerations. For example, the desire to influence the behaviors of other people may change a user’s choice of security setting. In this paper, a game theoretic framework is established to model users’ interactions that influence users’ decisions as to whether to undertake privacy protection or not. To model the relationship of user communities, community-structured evolutionary dynamics are introduced, in which interactions of users can only happen among those users who have at least one community in common. Then the dynamics of the users’ strategies to take a specific privacy protection or not is analyzed based on the proposed community structured evolutionary game theoretic framework. Experiments show that the proposed framework is effective in modeling the users’ relationships and privacy protection behaviors. Moreover, results can also help social network managers to design appropriate security service and payment mechanisms to encourage their users to take the privacy protection, which can promote the spreading of privacy behavior throughout the network.

Mobile Applications and Access to Private Data: The Supply Side of the Android Ecosystem

We analyze the data collection strategies of 65,000 developers in the market for mobile applications and track 300,000 applications over four years. Many apps belong to developers with multiple apps. This fact generates variation in the privacy behaviors of the same developer for our analysis. We uncover three stylized facts: First, developers “learn” to use increasingly intrusive data strategies as they become more experienced. Second, intrusive data collection is most likely in apps that target the 13+, and 16+ age category, which raises concerns for the protection of young app consumers. Third, even within developers, critical and atypical permissions predict problematic usage of private user data most successfully. Our findings inform both regulators and scientists who wish to model supply in the market for mobile apps.

Place Determinants for the Personalization-Privacy Tradeoff among Students

Aim/Purpose: This exploratory study investigates the influential factors of users’ decisions in the dilemma of whether to agree to online personalization or to protect their online privacy. Background: Various factors related to online privacy and anonymity were considered, such as user’s privacy concern on the Web in general and particularly on social networks, user online privacy literacy, and field of study. Methodology: To this end, 155 students from different fields of study in the Israeli academia were administered closed-ended questionnaires. Findings: The multivariate linear regression analysis showed that as the participants’ privacy concern increases, they tend to prefer privacy protection over online personalization. In addition, there were significant differences between men and women, as men tended to favor privacy protection more than women did. Impact on Society: This research has social implications for the academia and general public as they show it is possible to influence the personalization-privacy tradeoff and encourage users to prefer privacy protection by raising their concern for the preservation of their online privacy. Furthermore, the users’ preference to protect their privacy even at the expense of their online malleability may lead to the reduction of online privacy-paradox behavior. Future Research: Since our results were based on students' self-perceptions, which might be biased, future work should apply qualitative analysis to explore additional types and influencing factors of online privacy behavior.

The role of privacy fatigue in online privacy behavior

The increasing difficulty in managing one's online personal data leads to individuals feeling a loss of control. Additionally, repeated consumer data breaches have given people a sense of futility, ultimately making them weary of having to think about online privacy. This phenomenon is called “privacy fatigue.” Although privacy fatigue is prevalent and has been discussed by scholars, there is little empirical research on the phenomenon. This study aimed not only to conceptualize privacy fatigue but also to examine its role in online privacy behavior. Based on literature on burnout, we developed measurement items for privacy fatigue, which has two key dimensions —emotional exhaustion and cynicism. Data analyzed from a survey of 324 Internet users showed that privacy fatigue has a stronger impact on privacy behavior than privacy concerns do, although the latter is widely regarded as the dominant factor in explaining online privacy behavior.

Factors affecting users’ online privacy literacy among students in Israel

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the attitudes and influential factors of users’ knowledge and use of the tools designated for controlling and enhancing online privacy, which are referred to as online privacy literacy (OPL). Particularly, inspired by the protection motivation theory, a motivational factor is defined as comprising several variables which reflect users’ motivation to protect their online privacy.Design/methodology/approachTo this end, a user study was conducted based on the quantitative method with the participation of 169 students from the Israeli academia who were administered closed-ended questionnaires.FindingsGenerally low to moderate levels of OPL were obtained. Interestingly, the multivariate linear regression analysis showed that motivational factors, such as users’ concern for personal information protection on the internet and users’ privacy self-efficacy and sense of anonymity when visiting a website, were among the strongest predictive factors of users’ OPL level.Social implicationsThis research has social implications that might contribute to an increase in the OPL among internet users.Originality/valueThe direct influence of the examined factors on users’ OPL was not previously discussed in the literature. As a result of the study, a comprehensive model of user online privacy behavior was constructed.

The valuation of privacy premium features for smartphone apps: The influence of defaults and expert recommendations

This study examines the impact of privacy defaults and expert recommendations on smartphone users' willingness to pay for “privacy-enhanced” features on paid applications using a 2 (privacy premium default/no privacy premium default) x 2 (privacy expert recommendation/non-privacy expert recommendation) experimental design. Participants (N = 309) configured four paid apps with respect to privacy features. Selecting premium privacy features was associated with an increased cost, while removing premium privacy features reduced the cost of the application. Replicating findings from behavioral economics on default modes in decision-making, we found that participants presented with apps with privacy premium default features were more likely to retain the more expensive privacy features. However, the recommendation source did not have a significant effect on this relationship. We discuss how these findings extend existing work on users' decision-making process around privacy and suggest potential avenues for nudging users’ privacy behaviors on mobile devices.

The Role of Online Privacy Concern as a Mediator between Internet Self-Efficacy and Online Technical Protection Privacy Behavior

Online risks may result in unnecessary harm but these risks can be minimized by being online privacy concerned and by taking privacy protective actions. Few studies examined the impact of privacy concern and internet self-efficacy on the online technical protection privacy behavior. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the effect of privacy concern and internet self-efficacy on technical protection. Quantitative and purposive sampling methods were used in this study. Data were gathered via questionnaire surveys from 235 undergraduates from six universities in Malaysia. The questionnaire includes participants’ demographic data, internet addiction test, web user self-efficacy scale, privacy concern, and technical protection scale. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the effect of internet self-efficacy and privacy concern on technical protection, while controlling for gender, course type, and internet addiction. Results showed that both privacy concern and internet self-efficacy were significant predictors of technical protection. Moreover, mediation analysis showed that there was an indirect effect of internet self-efficacy on technical protection through privacy concern. The results contribute to literature by revealing how internet self-efficacy and privacy concern increase technical protection. The government and policy makers can design intervention and prevention programs that aim to boost privacy concern and internet self-efficacy, so that internet users are more capable of safeguarding their online privacy.

Facebook privacy management strategies: A cluster analysis of user privacy behaviors

Online privacy management research related to e-commerce mainly focuses on whether or not to disclose information. Online social networking on the other hand, offers a broader set of privacy management behaviors such as using vendor-provided privacy settings, limiting self-disclosures, and managing network size. While much prior research has examined these privacy behaviors individually, we investigate how Facebook users combine these behaviors to form privacy management strategies. Using communications privacy management and impression management theories we first develop four propositions about possible user strategies that combine differing levels of disclosure, network size, and privacy setting use. One strategy is the most public, whereas two others deviate from this public strategy by either limiting disclosures, or using privacy settings to restrict access. The final strategy is the most private. We then survey two samples of Facebook users (college students and the general population) about their privacy management behaviors, privacy perceptions, technology usage perceptions, and demographics. Using cluster analysis we find some support for all four propositions, and for an additional strategy that beginning users may employ. The findings also reveal intriguing differences among the privacy management strategies in terms of perceptions and demographics like privacy concern, usefulness, enjoyment, and age, gender, and experience. Implications for future research are discussed.

Logging you, Logging me

Low cost digital cameras in smartphones and wearable devices make it easy for people to automatically capture and share images as a visual lifelog. Having been inspired by a US campus based study that explored individual privacy behaviours of visual lifeloggers, we conducted a similar study on a UK campus, however we also focussed on the privacy behaviours of groups of lifeloggers. We argue for the importance of replicability and therefore we built a publicly available toolkit, which includes camera design, study guidelines and source code. Our results show some similar sharing behaviour to the US based study: people tried to preserve the privacy of strangers, but we found fewer bystander reactions despite using a more obvious camera. In contrast, we did not find a reluctance to share images of screens but we did find that images of vices were shared less. Regarding privacy behaviours in groups of lifeloggers, we found that people were more willing to share images of people they were interacting with than of strangers, that lifelogging in groups could change what defines a private space, and that lifelogging groups establish different rules to manage privacy for those inside and outside the group.