A Holistic Study of Privacy in Social Networking Sites

INTRODUCTIONIn this digital era, social networking has become a global phenomenon (Boyd et al. 2008). People of all ages use online social networking sites (SNS) as a primary communication media to get or stay connected with their friends and family (Livingstone 2008). Individuals voluntarily share a lot and different types of information on the SNS. For instance, users share personal information, such as personal interests, special hobbies, and several other facets of their lives in an effort to develop intimate and personal connections with other users (Vasalou et al. 2010). Moreover, a lot of personally identifiable information is collected during the sign-up process (Bonneau et al. 2009b). One of the major challenges surrounding SNS is to ensure that user information is protected.Recent trends note that SNS have been subject to legal scrutiny due to their privacy violations (Pilkington 2007). The information available on SNS has been misused by several different agencies including educational institutions (Fogel et al. 2009) and prospective/current employers (Finder 2006). Prior studies depict the ease of extracting information from SNS; for example, attackers could take photographs extracted from a friend's social networking pages and use them as personal signatures to create an authentic phishing message (Jagatic et al. 2007). In some cases the consequences for SNS and their users have been socially damaging and humiliating (Rosenblum 2007). The industry trends indicate that SNS are increasingly releasing privacy options to protect various facets of user information; however it does not seem to alleviate the privacy concerns (Barbara 2011). Some possible explanations include - (a) the privacy options are skewed towards protecting certain user information (Eldon 2011), (b) users are not aware of the privacy options available to protect their content (Barbara 2011), (c) users may not have sufficient know-how to locate and apply the privacy options (Huber et al. 2011). This study attempts to address these issues using a three step approach. First, it examines the different types of information users can share on SNS. Second, it captures the privacy options provided by SNS to protect the different types of information. Third, it examines the users' ease of use and degree of control for each privacy option. Ease of use refers to the degree of effort required to use the privacy options, and degree of control is the leverage users have to manipulate the privacy options. The rationale for the third objective is drawn from technology acceptance research which contends that individuals intend to use a technology when it requires less effort and is perceived to be beneficial (Venkatesh et al. 2003; Venkatesh et al. 2012).The findings provide implications for both users and social networking sites. From a user standpoint, this study provides suggestions on the different types of information that can be shared safely on social networking sites. In addition, this research informs users regarding the effort required to enable and handle various privacy options to protect their online information. From a social networking provider perspective, this study provides awareness about what is being expected with respect to privacy options and how to meet those expectations. In addition, the findings shed insight on how to enrich various privacy options in order to cater to user requirements and thereby to facilitate their sharing of different types of information. This is particularly important because success of a social networking site depends on the magnitude of users utilizing it to share information.LITERATURE REVIEWResearch related to social networking is continually emerging. Prior research has explored several issues related to social networking. Some studies have examined the factors that motivate individuals to participate in social networking (Boyd et al. 2008; Tufekci 2008). Others have analyzed user attitudes towards social networks with an emphasis on information sharing and disclosure (Constant et al. …