Recent study looks at Facebook’s privacy

A recent study conducted by the Naveen Jindal School of Management evaluated the impact of Facebook’s granular privacy controls and how these options affect the disclosure behavior of the user.

The study came about because of the concerns over privacy when it comes to social network platforms.

“People have different views on the value of privacy controls in managing disclosures and therefore privacy dangers,” Associate Professor of Information Systems Dr. Huseyin Cavusoglu said. “Some people argue that giving users more granular controls mitigates privacy issues because users can effectively limit the recipients of shared content, thereby increasing the secrecy of disclosures. On the contrary, other people claim that users perceive privacy risks less severely when they have more controls to exercise, and as a result, share more content publicly, thereby increasing the openness of disclosures.”

The study by Naveen Jindal School of Management was published in the most recent issue of the INFORMS journal, "Information Systems Research."

During the course of the study, researchers collected data from Facebook to test the association between privacy controls and the disclosure patterns of users regarding two of the most popular ways in which content is shared: wall posts and private messages.