Personal information concerns and provision in social network sites: Interplay between secure preservation and true presentation

2015 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinyoung Min
Author(s):  
Fred Stutzman ◽  
Ralph Gross ◽  
Alessandro Acquisti

Over the past decade, social network sites have experienced dramatic growth in popularity, reaching most demographics and providing new opportunities for interaction and socialization. Through this growth, users have been challenged to manage novel privacy concerns and balance nuanced trade-offs between disclosing and withholding personal information. To date, however, no study has documented how privacy and disclosure evolved on social network sites over an extended period of time. In this manuscript we use profile data from a longitudinal panel of 5,076 Facebook users to understand how their privacy and disclosure behavior changed between 2005---the early days of the network---and 2011. Our analysis highlights three contrasting trends. First, over time Facebook users in our dataset exhibited increasingly privacy-seeking behavior, progressively decreasing the amount of personal data shared publicly with unconnected profiles in the same network. However, and second, changes implemented by Facebook near the end of the period of time under our observation arrested or in some cases inverted that trend. Third, the amount and scope of personal information that Facebook users revealed privately to other connected profiles actually increased over time---and because of that, so did disclosures to ``silent listeners'' on the network: Facebook itself, third-party apps, and (indirectly) advertisers. These findings highlight the tension between privacy choices as expressions of individual subjective preferences, and the role of the environment in shaping those choices.


Author(s):  
Nisrine Zammar

This article examines the role of actors in a Social Network Sites and also the triggers and challenges they represent to social networking between today’s communities and businesses. A Social Network Sites is the product of the evolution of social liaisons and the emergence of online communities of people who are interested in exploring the concerns and activities of others. A social network is the assembly of direct or indirect contacts; a network is the product of interactions with the actors (individuals, families, enterprises, etc.) enabled by means of the structural design of web 2.0. Social Network Sites bring people together to interact through chat rooms, and share personal information and ideas around any topics via personal homepage publishing tools. This article is intended to be a trigger to deeply and more intensely explore potential roles of actor-network theory in the Social Network Sites context, in today’s and tomorrow’s world.


2011 ◽  
pp. 2300-2309
Author(s):  
Nisrine Zammar

This article examines the role of actors in a Social Network Sites and also the triggers and challenges they represent to social networking between today’s communities and businesses. A Social Network Sites is the product of the evolution of social liaisons and the emergence of online communities of people who are interested in exploring the concerns and activities of others. A social network is the assembly of direct or indirect contacts; a network is the product of interactions with the actors (individuals, families, enterprises, etc.) enabled by means of the structural design of web 2.0. Social Network Sites bring people together to interact through chat rooms, and share personal information and ideas around any topics via personal homepage publishing tools. This article is intended to be a trigger to deeply and more intensely explore potential roles of actor-network theory in the Social Network Sites context, in today’s and tomorrow’s world.


First Monday ◽  
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Woodrow Hartzog

The contradiction of social networks is that revealing of personal, private information can have harmful consequences, yet users continue to disclose such information at an alarming rate. Ironically, the advent of social network sites opens the possibility of a relatively safe place to disclose private information. This article proposes a “privacy box” application to be used within social network sites that would require users to accept a pre–written promise of confidentiality before gaining access to personal information. Although it would not serve as a universal remedy for privacy harms on social network sites, it could serve to carve out a space for relatively safe self–disclosure online.


2019 ◽  
Vol 119 (4) ◽  
pp. 774-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samar Mouakket ◽  
Yuan Sun

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a research framework by drawing on the network externalities research and previous literature on information systems to understand the antecedents of information disclosure. The framework postulates that the following network externalities are important factors affecting social network sites (SNS) perceived usefulness (PU): perceived external prestige, referent network size and perceived complementarity. In addition, the paper proposes that PU, habit and subjective norms significantly affect information disclosure of SNS among Chinese users. Design/methodology/approach Data are collected from 251 Chinese university students who use SNS. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses presented in the model. Findings The findings provide support for all the hypotheses, with the exception of the influence of referent network size on PU and the influence of subjective norms on information disclosure. Both perceived external prestige and perceived complementarity have reported positive effect on PU of SNS. In turn, the authors have found that PU and habit have positive effects on information disclosure. Originality/value SNS encourage users to reveal personal information by allowing them to post photos and videos and share their interests and feelings on the site. Yet, limited empirical research has investigated the concept of self-disclosure of personal information particularly among Chinese users of SNS. To fill this research gap, the authors have developed a research framework by drawing on the network externalities research and previous literature on information systems to understand the antecedents of information disclosure.


2011 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Richard A Spinello

This paper reviews Facebook’s controversial privacy policies as a basis for considering how social network sites can better protect the personal information of their users. We argue that Facebook’s architecture leaves its users too exposed, especially to online surveillance. This architecture must be modified and Facebook must be more proactive in safeguarding the rights of their customers as it seeks to find the proper balance between user privacy and its commercial interests.


Author(s):  
Yanjun Yu

<div><p><em>This article examines the current status of privacy risk concern on Social Network Sites (SNS) among African American college students in a HBCU college in the United States. It also investigates the gender difference on this issue. The research focuses on the ‘privacy paradox’ phenomenon on SNS, in other words, how SNS users’ privacy risk concern associates with their self-disclosure activity. The research findings are interesting and confirm the ‘privacy paradox’ phenomenon among the less studied African American college student community. The results show although the participants of the study fear something unpleasant can happen to them due to their presence on SNS and realize it is risky to publish their personal information on SNS, they still do some self-disclosure activities such as post photos and status. When they see the threat to their privacy due to their presence on SNS, they still post their status and videos on SNS. When they feel unsafe to publish their personal information on SNS, they still post photos and videos on SNS. Gender only significantly affect the post photo self-disclosure activity on SNS. The research contributes to the academia by investigating privacy concerns on the rarely studied minority community i.e., African American college student body. The study can provide tips for the privacy policy practitioners when they make or modify their privacy policies. </em></p></div>


Author(s):  
Somia Moh. T. L. Ashafee ◽  
Nur Haryani Zakaria ◽  
Hatim Mohamad Tahir ◽  
Norliza Katuk ◽  
Mohd Nizam Omar

Security and privacy issues are a major concern to users of social network sites (SNS). These issues range from unauthorized access to personal information to cyber bullying. Previous researchers have been exerting different perspectives including technical, psychological and law to study privacy and security issues. However, the issues of security and privacy seems to be ongoing. In view of the security threats and privacy issues of student using SNS, this study sets out to examine the security awareness, preparedness towards cyber-attacks and security behaviors among IT and Non-IT postgraduate students. As such, 400 postgraduate students were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. The findings reported in this study revealed that IT students have significantly high security awareness and behavior as compared to Non-IT students. However, there is no significant difference between the preparedness towards cyber-attacks of both IT and Non-IT students. Finally, this study demonstrates that there is a significant relationship between preparedness towards cyber-attacks and security behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications of this study highlight the importance of security awareness and understanding of technical-know how in preempting security attacks among SNS users.


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