The Uses of Privacy Online: Trading a Loss of Privacy for Social Web Gratifications?

Empirical evidence demonstrates that Social Web users are in fact quite concerned about their privacy, and the protection of privacy is not a major problem for users.

Abstract

According to Etzioni (1999), the first step in analyzing privacy is to determine whether or not there is a problem. Given the easy availability of private information on the Internet and the seemingly great readiness of Social Web users to disclose personal data, it would appear that the protection of privacy is not a major problem for users. However, empirical evidence demonstrates that Social Web users are in fact quite concerned about their privacy (Barnes 2006; Tufekci 2008; Debatin et al. 2009).