The following is an analysis on data I personally collected from friends and peers. Asking 6 questions, I collected 28 responses by sending out a link to a Google Survey over email and Facebook. Quite obviously, a number of issues exist with my polling method--I used an unrepresentative sample and there is a response bias, as those who are personally connected to me were more likely to respond to the survey. By no means do I assert that any of the conclusions I have drawn are representative of the general population of Facebook users, nor the Emory community of Facebook users, etc. I have simply analyzed the responses I received and made some conclusions that may or may not be applied to the habits and perceptions of Facebook users more generally.
Evidently, a majority of users have not checked their privacy settings on Facebook. This means that an individual has not accessed the privacy section of his/her settings and made conscious decisions regarding various privacy settings (See the privacy settings page below, pulled from my personal Facebook page).
This points to the fact that college-aged Facebook users might not be conscious of the need to take charge of their privacy settings--they are either (1) unconcerned about being private on the social media site or (2) unaware that privacy settings are not automatically applied to their profiles. This is actually surprising to me because of how important Facebook privacy is to me personally; I continually review my settings by using the "Privacy Check-up" feature that Facebook provides.
21/28 (75%) of respondents said they have never reviewed the third party apps that collect their information. A third party application is one that is separate from Facebook; however, a user has granted the app access to that user's information via a link to Facebook (usually a combination of name, birthday, email/phone). This is less surprising to me because prior to the "Privacy Check-up" feature (see below a screenshot of my personal "Privacy Check-up" feature) mentioned above, there was no easy way to check which apps were collecting your information. However, Facebook has made this task much easier, and thus, users should have no excuse for knowing which apps have their information.
53.6% of respondents consider their profiles "private." In retrospect, I regret asking this question because it is unclear. When comparing this question's percentage to that of the first question, there exists some discrepancy; in order to have a "private" profile one presumably has reviewed their privacy settings, but this is not reflected in the responses. I presume that this has to do with the lack of clarity of the question--respondents may have assumed the question was "Do you consider your profile private?"
Nearly 61% of respondents said that they post their (1) phone number; (2) living place; or both. While this information is fairly innocuous, it would seem that this might point to the fact that individuals are fairly comfortable with certain information being made available on the Internet. Furthermore, this information in the hands of the wrong person is potentially dangerous, which will be discussed later.
A bare majority of respondents answered that they have not posted anything on Facebook that they later regretted. Once again, I could have been more clear with the question in what I was trying to get at; I was attempting to find out whether respondents have at any time posted something that they later wished was more private. The way the question was worded, respondents may have thought I was referring to something that they were later embarrassed by, that got them in trouble, etc. However, the way the data exists now, it would seem that people do not necessarily post things on the Facebook that they wished was private later down the road.
This question was asked in order to see who users are most concerned about collecting their personal data. The government and employers were the two most prevalent responses among respondents. This was not surprising to me--because of the ordeal with Edward Snowden and the NSA collecting citizen data, people became fearful of a omniscient government that collects their information without their consent. Furthermore, we are continually told to beware of what we post online because it could affect our potential employability. So, when respondents overwhelmingly responded that they were most concerned with their privacy in regards to the government and employers, it made sense to me. Targeted advertisements are seemingly a part of using the Internet; evidently, Facebook users accept that advertisers are collecting their data while they use the site, and that does not seem to bother them as much. They are more concerned with hackers collecting their data; this was also not surprising to me because of the prevalence of hacking in our society; we are continually hearing about hackers (ex. the Russia/Trump campaign hacking allegations), so it makes sense that users have that fear in their mindset while using Facebook.
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