Who do you trust: Facebook or your friends? - Analyzing predictors of privacy protection in social networks - Vortrag GOR Mannheim 2013

University of Cologne / Rheinische Fachhochschule Cologne

Christian Bosau

Who do you trust: Facebook or your friends?

Analyzing predictors of privacy protection in social networks

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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

[email protected]