Privacy: an Academic Perspective

It's easy to find scads of information online about privacy issues and news, but what is the academic world saying? A quick search on my school's library brought up a multitude of articles. Timeliness seems to become more prevalent in today's age of information, so I decided to review a couple of the most recently published articles.

Consumer Trust in the Online Retail Context: Exploring the Antecedents and Consequences
Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 27(4): 323–346 (April 2010)

This article explored many issues surrounding web site quality and usability as well as consumer trust, intentions and attitudes. Through prior research, the authors developed 21 hypotheses and conducted their own Internet-based survey, which yielded 452 usable records (95% between the ages of 18 and 35.) The authors, in true academic fashion, delve deep into their findings with mathematical analyses. In short:

The results show that Web site quality features, including usability, security and privacy assurances, and product information quality, significantly and positively influence trust.

In other words, this study's main (and most compelling) finding is this: "This study shows that having an easy-to-use Web site is the key to e-commerce success."

I guess good design and ethics have become one in the same!

Disclosure of personal and contact information by young people in social networking sites: An analysis using Facebook profiles as an example
International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Vol 6(1): 81-101 (April 2010)

This article discussed a lot of the same type of information that I've been seeing lately: Facebook (and other social networking) users tend to reveal a lot of personal information and are unaware of their privacy options or who can view their profile. They are also, for the most part, unaware of their loss of privacy just by using these sites.

What I found most interesting about this article, however, was the discussion of the definition of privacy, broken into four "concepts":

1. Control over information about oneself.

2. Control over one's own personal information.

Westin, moreover, argues that individuals are continually engaged in a process of adjustment to find a balance between the desire for privacy and the desire for disclosure of one’s self to others.

3. "The third concept focuses on privacy standing in competition with two very different ideas: the 'monitored’ and the ‘searchable’ part of anyone’s life (Lessing 1998)."

According to Lessing (1998: 1), privacy is ‘what’s left after one subtracts, as it were, the monitored, and the searchable, from the balance of social life’. He continues, stating that ‘life where less is monitored is a life more private’ and ‘life where less can be searched is a life more private’

4. "The fourth concept sees privacy as ‘the immunity from the judgment of others’ (Johnson 1992: 272), referring to those aspects of a person’s life that are culturally recognized as being safe and protected from others’ judgements."

I think that, while the first and second "concepts" are what are generally thought of when the issue of privacy is brought up, the third and fourth concepts have become increasingly apparent in the age of online social media.

It's certainly true in my own life. Ten years ago, I started a "blog" (which wasn't called a blog back then). It was completely public, but I never thought that would be a concern. After all, the Internet wasn't the animal it is today; hardly anyone blogged, and "google" had yet to become a verb. The blog attracted a readership and was a joy to keep up. I was devastated when some undesirable family found it and judged me for what they'd found. They didn't understand the creative freedoms I was taking. They didn't "get" it, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

After that, I discovered privacy options and have been using them religiously since. However, I often find myself grappling with Westin's discussion of the balance between the desire for privacy, and the desire for self disclosure. The "delete", "edit", and "remove" buttons have become quite familiar to me, and I'm not afraid to use them. I often miss the random connections of strangers, though; something impossible to obtain when everything is "hidden." I've attempted completely public blogs since, but none of them gave me the same feeling as that first one. I'm always paranoid that someone undesirable is going to come across it. I find myself analyzing every sentence I write. It will never be the same. It's true what they say: Ignorance is bliss.

Learning to Profile the Internet User Profile

In his NY Times March 16th article, "How Privacy Disappears Online," reporter Steve Lohr investigates recent academic e-experiments that show the ease with which one's identity (even with careful attention to safeguarding private info) can be determined.

Lohr found that

"You may not disclose personal information, but your online friends and colleagues may do it for you, referring to your school or employer, gender, location and interests. Patterns of social communication, researchers say, are revealing.

'Personal privacy is no longer an individual thing,' said Harold Abelson, the computer science professor at M.I.T. 'In today’s online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.'

Collected together, the pool of information about each individual can form a distinctive 'social signature,' researchers say."

Lohr learned that "the F.T.C. and Congress are weighing steps like tighter industry requirements and the creation of a 'do not track' list, similar to the federal 'do not call' list, to stop online monitoring," which does show one of the ways in which legislative bodies are working with the transition to digital culture.

Lohr closes his article by quoting Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University who studies social networks, Kleinberg is "skeptical that rules will have much impact," and suggests to internet users that "'when you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public — because increasingly, it is.'"

Facebook's Social Web: How to Protect Your Privacy

Facebook's Social Web: How to Protect Your Privacy - PCWorld

Protecting your privacy on Facebook can feel like a full-time job. The social network has made a habit of tweaking its privacy policies with some regularity -- and in many cases, it's up to you to take proactive steps in order to keep your info out of the public eye.

This week's introduction of Facebook's "Open Graph" is no exception. By default, you're now opted in to the company's new social sharing services, and this time, they stretch way beyond the confines of Facebook.com.

If you're comfortable with that, more power to you. But if you'd rather keep your personal preferences private, here's a step-by-step guide to taking back control.

I consider myself fairly well-versed when it comes to online social networking, but even I have become confused with Facebook's changes over the past few months. Some options moved, some changed, some disappeared all together (or so it seems.) This is a great guide, but I find it ridiculous that it even needed to be written in the first place. I have a feeling my days on Facebook are numbered.

Edit to add: Here is a tool you can run to see what of your information is viewable publicly through the Facebook Graph API.