who do you trust: facebook or your friends? - analyzing predictors of privacy protection in social...
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University of Cologne / Rheinische Fachhochschule Cologne
Christian Bosau
Who do you trust: Facebook or your friends?
Analyzing predictors of privacy protection in social networks
Bosau - Who do you trust: Facebook or your friends? GOR 2013 Seite 2
Purpose of the study
Main purpose: Looking into trust and the members‘ reaction in social networks a bit deeper
Aspects about Facebook: • members are aware of privacy risks (Bosau, Becks & Aelker, 2009; Bosau, Fischer & Koll, 2008)
• still à huge amount of usage • members try out different protection strategies to lower privacy risks (Young & Quan-
Haase, 2009)
• members restrict their profile (Utz & Krämer, 2009), however mostly to their “friends”-list
The importance of privacy concerns & trust: • how people generally think about privacy and whether they trust the
requestor influences how much information they give online (Joinson, Reips, Buchanan & Paine-Schofield, 2010)
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Two agents to be trusted
The platform provider (e.g. Facebook): • many reports discuss the misbehaviour of Facebook regarding privacy issues
• people know the risk, but don’t care?
The “friends”: • users add numerous people to their friends-list, even people, that are not close
friends
• managing the increasing number of different kinds of “friends” becomes an issue
Main question: Who is the requestor, i.e. the communication partner in a social network?
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The study
Method: • online questionnaire (posted via mailing-lists and personal emails,
snowball sampling) in February/March 2012 • 270 participants • age: mean=24,8 SD=5,4 male=24%, female=76%
Former studies: § measurement of privacy concerns, privacy protection behaviour & information dissemination separately
This study: § combining the different aspects in one single study § differentiation between two trust agents
Research question / hypotheses: • Trust in Facebook and trust in “friends” are two separate factors. • Trust in “friends” matters (more than trust in the provider), when it comes to
protecting the privacy in a social network à dependent variable: privacy protection behaviour in Facebook
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The predictors
Sociodemographic control factors:
Age
General Privacy concern & behaviour (Reips, U.-D., Buchanan, T., & Oostlander, J. ,2008, 2010):
Gender
Attitude Behaviour Technical Protection
Behaviour General Caution
Trust (Joinson, Reips, Buchanan & Paine-Schofield, 2010):
in “friends” in Facebook
Additional predictors:
privacy concerns in FB (e.g. boyd & Ellison, 2008)
privacy settings of profile (Utz + Krämer, 2009)
No. of “friends”
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Additional predictors
Specific privacy concerns in Facebook: • Scale developed based on boyd & Ellison (2008) and Debatin, Lovejoy, Horn &
Hughes (2009) • Question “Which problems or threats do you see when using Facebook?” • Scale: 1 = can happen hardly vs. 5 = can happen very easily
• 14 Items (Cronbach’s α = .85): • Focusing on the major concerns or threats named in the literature: • e.g. “damaged reputation due to rumors and gossip“; “hacking or identity theft“;
“phishing“; “surveillance-like structures due to backtracking“ “consumer-profiling”
Restrictions & privacy settings set to Facebook profile: • Scale based on Utz & Krämer (2009) • Question “Which aspects did you open up to which audience?” • Scale: “all”, “friends of friends”, “only friends”, “subgroups of friends”, “nobody” • 14 Items (Cronbach’s α = .83):
• e.g. “name”, “pictures”, “relationships status”, “friends list”, “comments”, “message wall”
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Differences in trust
3,34
2,36
2
2,5
3
3,5
4
trus
t
in "friends" in Facebook Trust: • Scale: 1 = low trust vs. 5 = high trust
• 8 Items (Joinson, Reips, Buchanan &
Paine-Schofield, 2010): • Focusing on the major
dimensions of trust: Benevolence, Competence, Reliability, Integrity, General Trust
• e.g. „The intensions of ... are good“; „... is/are trustworthy“; „... is/are dependable“; „I felt comfortable giving my personal information to ...“
• Facebook Cronbach’s α = .83 • „Friends“ Cronbach’s α = .89
F(1) = 297,33; p < .00; η² = 0,52
Important: § r = .11 (no sig.) è no correlation of the two scales è two independent aspects
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Protection of privacy
Privacy protection behaviour • based on Young & Quan-Haase
(2009), additional up-to-date possibilities were added
• Scale: 1 = never vs. 5 = very often
• Cronbach’s α = .83
• 14 items
• e.g. “I have provided fake or inaccurate information on Facebook to restrict people I don’t know from gaining information about me.” “I have deleted people from my friends list.” “I have told others to delete pictures that I found unpleasant.”
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Regression analysis
unstandar-dized B SE standardized Beta
Age -.00 .01 -.02
Gender .18 .10 .11
• dependent variable: privacy protection behaviour • stepwise regression analysis • R2 (adj.) = .13
* p < .05, ** p < .01
Attitude – Privacy Concern .11 .07 .11
Behaviour – General Caution .01 .06 .01
Behaviour – Technical Protection .12 .05 .15* Trust – in Facebook -.10 .07 -.09
Trust – in “friends“ -.16 .06 -.18** No. of “friends“ .00 .00 .21** Facebook privacy concerns -.05 .07 -.05
mean = 3,72 !!
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Regression analysis
unstandar-dized B SE standardized Beta
Age -.00 .01 -.03
Gender .19 .10 .12
• dependent variable: privacy protection behaviour • stepwise regression analysis • R2 (adj.) = .20
* p < .05, ** p < .01
Attitude – Privacy Concern .11 .06 .11
Behaviour – General Caution -.02 .06 -.02
Behaviour – Technical Protection .10 .05 .13* Trust – in Facebook -.05 .07 -.05
Trust – in “friends“ -.12 .05 -.14* No. of “friends“ .00 .00 .21** Facebook privacy concerns -.05 .07 -.05
Restricted profile .32 .07 .28**
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Conclusion
The “friends” in Facebook are a new important issues
• members are aware of privacy risks, trust in Facebook is quite low • however, the low trust in the provider does not lead to behavioural consequences • the huge number of “friends” comprises the risk of not being able to predict the
behaviour of all “friends” è if members don’t trust their added “friends”, they more likely try to use privacy protection strategies è this problem increases with the number of friends
Other results:
• general attitudes about privacy are to abstract and broad to be able to predict specific behaviour; though, specific Facebook concerns to not lead to protection either
• there is also a kind of skill or habit factor: if people use technical protection in other places they do so in Facebook as well
• AND: trust in “friends” and trust in Facebook are two independent factors
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Thank you very much for your attention!
Comments and questions can be sent to: Dr. Christian Bosau
christian.bosau@gmx.de
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