Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Jennifer King, Airi Lampinen, Alex Smolen. "Privacy: Is There An App For That?". Talk or presentation, July, 2011.

Abstract
Users of social networking sites (SNSs) increasingly must learn to negotiate privacy online with multiple service providers. Facebook’s third-party applications (apps) add an additional layer of complexity and confusion for users seeking to understand and manage their privacy. We conducted a novel exploratory survey (conducted on Facebook as a Platform app) to measure how Facebook app users interact with apps, what they understand about how apps access and exchange their profile information, and how these factors relate to their privacy concerns. In our analysis, we paid special attention to our most knowledgeable respondents: given their expertise, would they differ in behaviors or attitudes from less knowledgeable respondents? We found that misunderstandings and confusion abound about how apps function and how they manage profile data. Against our expectations, knowledge or behavior weren’t consistent predictors of privacy concerns with third-party apps or on SNSs in general. Instead, whether or not the respondent experienced an adverse privacy event on a social networking site was a reliable predictor of privacy attitudes.

Electronic downloads

• a12_King.pdf · application/pdf · 594 kbytes

• HTML

  Jennifer King, Airi Lampinen, Alex Smolen. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/864.html"
  ><i>Privacy: Is There An App For
  That?</i></a>, Talk or presentation,  July, 2011.

• Plain text

  Jennifer King, Airi Lampinen, Alex Smolen. "Privacy: Is
  There An App For That?". Talk or presentation,  July,
  2011.

• BibTeX

  @presentation{KingLampinenSmolen11_PrivacyIsThereAppForThat,
      author = {Jennifer King and Airi Lampinen and Alex Smolen},
      title = {Privacy: Is There An App For That?},
      month = {July},
      year = {2011},
      abstract = {Users of social networking sites (SNSs)
                increasingly must learn to negotiate privacy
                online with multiple service providers.
                Facebook’s third-party applications (apps) add
                an additional layer of complexity and confusion
                for users seeking to understand and manage their
                privacy. We conducted a novel exploratory survey
                (conducted on Facebook as a Platform app) to
                measure how Facebook app users interact with apps,
                what they understand about how apps access and
                exchange their profile information, and how these
                factors relate to their privacy concerns. In our
                analysis, we paid special attention to our most
                knowledgeable respondents: given their expertise,
                would they differ in behaviors or attitudes from
                less knowledgeable respondents? We found that
                misunderstandings and confusion abound about how
                apps function and how they manage profile data.
                Against our expectations, knowledge or behavior
                weren’t consistent predictors of privacy
                concerns with third-party apps or on SNSs in
                general. Instead, whether or not the respondent
                experienced an adverse privacy event on a social
                networking site was a reliable predictor of
                privacy attitudes. },
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/864.html}
  }
  

Posted by Mary Stewart on 4 Apr 2012.
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