Examining Privacy Concern in Social-Driven Location Sharing: An Empirical Study on Chinese Popular SNSs

Sharing location in SNSs has witnessed rapid development in recent years. Privacy is undoubtedly a barrier to the adoption of such location sharing services. In this paper, we investigate what factors affect users' privacy concerns and how privacy concerns may in turn affect users' location sharing behaviors. We conducted one quantitative survey and 8 interviews on Chinese popular SNSs. We identified 1) the factors that users care more about their privacy when posting location information on social networks, 2) what types of privacy information do they think might be exposed through location sharing, and 3) users' behavior patterns in cope with privacy concerns. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implication on the improvement of location sharing services.

[1]  C.-C. Jay Kuo,et al.  Security and privacy in online social networks: A survey , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo.

[2]  Sukeshini A. Grandhi,et al.  P3 systems: putting the place back into social networks , 2005, IEEE Internet Computing.

[3]  Lee Humphreys,et al.  Mobile Social Networks and Social Practice: A Case Study of Dodgeball , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[4]  Tara Matthews,et al.  Location disclosure to social relations: why, when, & what people want to share , 2005, CHI.

[5]  Alfred Kobsa,et al.  The Circles of Latitude: Adoption and Usage of Location Tracking in Online Social Networking , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering.

[6]  Stewart L. Tubbs.  Human Communication: Principles and Contexts , 2002 .

[7]  Loren G. Terveen,et al.  Capturing, sharing, and using local place information , 2007, CHI.

[8]  Tristan Henderson,et al.  Privacy in Location-Aware Computing Environments , 2007, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[9]  James B. D. Joshi,et al.  Towards understanding residential privacy by analyzing users' activities in foursquare , 2012, BADGERS@CCS.

[10]  Frederick Plotkin,et al.  I. SELF-DISCLOSURE , 1971 .

[11]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Location-Sharing Technologies: Privacy Risks and Controls , 2009 .

[12]  Airi Lampinen,et al.  We're in it together: interpersonal management of disclosure in social network services , 2011, CHI.

[13]  Norman M. Sadeh,et al.  Rethinking location sharing: exploring the implications of social-driven vs. purpose-driven location sharing , 2010, UbiComp.

[14]  Alex S. Taylor,et al.  Locating Family Values: A Field Trial of the Whereabouts Clock , 2007, UbiComp.

[15]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Who's viewed you?: the impact of feedback in a mobile location-sharing application , 2009, CHI.

[16]  Krishna P. Gummadi,et al.  Analyzing facebook privacy settings: user expectations vs. reality , 2011, IMC '11.

[17]  Jacob Kramer-Duffield,et al.  Friends only: examining a privacy-enhancing behavior in facebook , 2010, CHI.

[18]  John Zimmerman,et al.  I'm the mayor of my house: examining why people use foursquare - a social-driven location sharing application , 2011, CHI.

[19]  Christian S. Jensen,et al.  Location-Related Privacy in Geo-Social Networks , 2011, IEEE Internet Computing.

[20]  Jessica Staddon,et al.  Are privacy concerns a turn-off?: engagement and privacy in social networks , 2012, SOUPS.

[21]  Sameer Patil,et al.  Who gets to know what when: configuring privacy permissions in an awareness application , 2005, CHI.

[22]  Matthew Chalmers,et al.  From awareness to repartee: sharing location within social groups , 2008, CHI.

[23]  Daniel P. Siewiorek,et al.  The implications of offering more disclosure choices for social location sharing , 2012, CHI.

[24]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Locaccino: a privacy-centric location sharing application , 2010, UbiComp '10 Adjunct.

[25]  Ninghui Li,et al.  End-User Privacy in Human–Computer Interaction , 2009 .

[26]  Jason I. Hong,et al.  End-User Privacy in Human-Computer Interaction , 2007, Found. Trends Hum. Comput. Interact..

[27]  Sameer Patil,et al.  Reasons, rewards, regrets: privacy considerations in location sharing as an interactive practice , 2012, SOUPS.