Technological innovations and advancements are helping people gain an increasingly comfortable life, as well as expand their social capital through online networks by offering individual's new opportunities to share personal information. By collecting vast amounts of data a whole new range of services can be offered, information can be collected and compared, and a new level of individualization can be reached. However, with these new technical capacities comes the omnipresence of various devices gathering data, potential threats to privacy, and individuals' increasing concern over data privacy. This paper aims to shed light on the 'privacy paradox' phenomenon, the dichotomy between privacy attitude, concern, and behavior, by examining previous literature as well as using an online survey (N=463). The findings indicate that there is a difference between attitude, concern, and actual behavior. While individuals' value their data privacy and are concerned about information collected on them, few take action to protect it and actions rarely align with expressed concerns. However, the 'privacy paradox' is a complex phenomenon and it requires further research, especially with the implications of a data driven society and when introducing emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things. / Tekniska innovationer och framsteg har bidragit till att människor kan erbjudas en alltmer bekväm livsstil. Genom insamling av stora mängder data kan individer erbjudas ett helt nytt utbud av tjänster, information kan samlas in och jämföras, och en helt ny nivå av Individualisering kan uppnås. Dock innebär dessa innovationer enallt större närvaro av datainsamlandeenheter, potentiella hot mot privatliv, samt individers ökade oro kring dataintegritet. Denna uppsats undersöker "the privacy paradox", skillnaden mellan attityd och beteende kring datasäkerhet, och dess konsekvenser i ett datastyrt samhälle i och med att ny teknik introduceras. Undersökningen har skett genom en litteraturstudie samt en enkätundersökning (N=463) och resultaten visar på ett det finns en skillnad mellan attityd och beteende. Individer värderar datasäkerhet och är oroliga kring vilken mängd information som samlas in, dock är det få som agerar för att inte dela information och attityd går sällan i linje med faktiskt beteende. "The privacy paradox" är ett komplext fenomen och mer forskning krävs, speciellt i och med introduktion av ny teknik så som Artificiell intelligens och Internet of Things.

<p dir="ltr">Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are deployed in many applications and protecting the privacy of training data has become a major concern. Membership Inference Attacks (MIAs) occur when an unauthorized person is able to determine whether a piece of data is used in training the DNNs. This paper investigates using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in modern processors to protect the privacy of training data. Running DNNs on TEE, however, encounters many challenges, including limited computing and storage resources as well as a lack of development frameworks. This paper proposes a new method to partition pre-trained DNNs so that parts of the DNNs can fit into TEE to protect data privacy. The existing software infrastructure for running DNNs on TEE requires a significant amount of human effort using C programs. However, most existing DNNs are implemented using Python. This paper presents a framework that can automate most parts of the process of porting Python-based DNNs to TEE. The proposed method is deployed in Arm TrustZone-A on Raspberry Pi 3B+ with OPTEE-OS and evaluated on popular image classification models - AlexNet, ResNet, and VGG. Experimental results show that our method can reduce the accuracy of gradient-based MIAs on AlexNet, VGG- 16, and ResNet-20 evaluated on the CIFAR-100 dataset by 17.9%, 11%, and 35.3%. On average, processing an image in the native execution environment takes 4.3 seconds, whereas in the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), it takes about 10.1 seconds per image.<br><br></p>

Social media become a powerful communication medium for effective online social interaction globally. The use of various social networking sites has integrated into people’s daily lives especially among young adults. Problem arises when personal information is used without individuals’ involvement and relevant privacy risks increased. The main focus for the thesis is to investigate privacy perception and risks knowledge of Facebook usage among university students in Sweden. Based on this focus, the research identifies the key reasons that students decide to use and still use Facebook despite of privacy risks. The study also explores how user perspective of privacy affects the utilization of Facebook. The adopted methodology is qualitative research through the methods of interview and Facebook data analysis among ten young adult students at Linnaeus University in Sweden. As result, the research has identified seven concepts and three special outcomes to answer the research questions. Through the analysis, we have recognized weak perception of privacy risks among university students. Although users claim they are privacy concerned yet large amount of private information is shared on Facebook. The findings have shown that users are somewhat willing to accept certain part of potential privacy risks and personal information usage by different parties, in exchange for benefits and needs of online interaction in today’s modern society. Users believe the shared personal information on Facebook is under control and they can prepare for possible consequences. However, we believe that people’s needs for popular online social interaction outweigh privacy concerns. We suggest that it is significantly important for social networking sites’ users to balance benefits and risks, in order to maintain balanced usage and positive effects of online personal privacy. In the end of the thesis, we have suggested two future research directions based on our research topic.

Attacks on computer systems continue to be a problem. The majority of the attacks target home computer users. To help mitigate the attacks some companies provide security awareness training to their employees. However, not all people work for a company that provides security awareness training and typically, home computer users do not have the incentive to take security awareness training on their own. Research in security awareness and security behavior has produced conflicting results. Therefore, it is not clear, how security aware home computer users are or to what extent security awareness affects the security behavior of home computer users. The goal of this study was to determine if there is a relationship between security awareness and users practicing good security behavior. This study adapted its research model from the health belief model (HBM), which accesses a patient’s decision to perform health related activities. The research model included the HBM constructs of perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, perceived threat, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy. The research model also contained the security awareness (SA) and concern for information privacy (CFIP) constructs. The model used SA to ascertain the effect of security awareness on a person’s self-efficacy in information security (SEIS), perceived threat, CFIP, and security behavior. The research model included CFIP to ascertain its effect on security behavior. The developed survey measured the participants' security awareness, concern for information privacy, self-efficacy, expectations of security actions, perceived security threats, cues to action, and security behavior. SurveyMonkey administered the survey. SurveyMonkey randomly selected 267 participants from its 30 million-member base. The findings of this study indicate home computer users are security aware. SA does not have a direct effect on a user’s security behavior, perceived threat, or CFIP. However, it does have influence on SEIS. SEIS has a weak effect on expectations. CFIP has an effect on a user’s security behavior after removing perceived threat from the research model. Perceived susceptibility has a direct effect on a user’s security behavior, but perceived severity or perceived threat does not.

Social networks have integrated into people’s daily lives and they became a powerful medium for effective marketing and communication worldwide. Problem raise when governments and special agencies violate users’ information privacy under the pretext of protecting national security or something as, furthermore, when information became the source of income for social networks it became necessary to investigate users concerns about informational privacy on social platforms, if there are. The main purpose of the thesis is to understand what level of privacy awareness users on social networks have and how much relevant knowledge about surveillance on social networks they recognize. Moreover, the thesis aims to present users’ opinion about surveillance on Facebook and if they accept to be surveyed in certain scenarios. As results, the study has identified ambiguity in Facebook terms and data policy, while there has been clarity that Facebook applies massive surveillance in terms of data collection on all users on the network. 71% of the participants had concerns about their privacy on social networks, two-thirds of the participants didn’t read Facebook terms and 76% did believe that social networks sell users information for own benefits. The majority of the interview participants showed lack of knowledge about data collection on social networks, and didn’t know if governments do surveillance on social platforms or not. However, 37% of the survey participants claimed that they have nothing to hide and governments can look into their activities online, and almost similar percentage supported such an action. Further, most of the interview participants protect their informational privacy on social networks by having good privacy settings, controlling who have access to certain posts or managing friends list. However, 1/3 of the participants who had good privacy settings didn’t know all their friends on FB. Through personal observations on data analysis and literature review, I concluded the thesis with some suggestions of possible approaches to enhance information privacy, these recommendations present my own thoughts and weren’t derived in academic way rather personal notes during the thesis study.

Data surveillance is the systematic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons. This collection of papers was the basis for a supplication under Rule 28 of the ANU's Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Rules. The papers develop a body of theory that explains the nature, applications and impacts of the data processing technologies that support the investigation or monitoring of individuals and populations. Literature review and analysis is supplemented by reports of field work undertaken in both the United States and Australia, which tested the body of theory, and enabled it to be articulated. The research programme established a firm theoretical foundation for further work. It provided insights into appropriate research methods, and delivered not only empirically-based descriptive and explanatory data, but also evaluative information relevant to policy-decisions. The body of work as a whole provides a basis on which more mature research work is able to build.

<p>The current information society is collecting information about individual needs, wants and desires continuously with the help of new technologies. Information systems, such as consumer relationship management (CRM) have a crucial importance when providing personalized services to the customers. This is done by gathering, storing, maintaining and distributing important consumer knowledge throughout the organization. (Chen & Popovich, 2003) However as previous studies have shown, consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about threats to their personal privacy when new technologies are integrated into the society (e.g. Cranor et al, 1999; Kervenoael et al, 2007). As these emerging issues are becoming more common in the consumers’ daily lives, it is of great importance to discover their perceptions about it. Hence, the purpose of this study is to examine the consumers’ perception about their privacy and how they affiliate with their personal information being processed in various organizations.</p><p>The theoretical framework suggests that several factors affects the consumers comfort in sharing personal information to companies, such as the physical environment of the organization, which type of information that is shared, what organization that stores and uses the information, the psychological distance the actors have to each other and how much control the consumers have over the use of their personal information. A selfadministered questionnaire was used to collect the data. The results showed that the majority of the respondents were concerned about the information that is gathered about them, which further emphasises the importance of this study. It was evident that the respondents were more willing to provide demographic and lifestyle information, rather than financial and purchase related information. The results also showed a variation depending on which organization that is considered. The various organizations were categorized into four different groups; Intimate distance, personal distance, social distance and public distance, depending on the respondents’ perceived comfort in sharing their personal information with them.</p><p>Some significant differences were observed between the various demographic groups as well. One of the findings indicates that men appear to be more comfortable in sharing their personal information to certain companies in comparison to women, due to a higher intellectual risk-propensity. It is argued that the consumers concern for privacy is an important issue to consider for companies. In order to maintain a strong relationship with their customers it should be integrated as an essential part of their CRM-strategies to make their information gathering techniques more efficient.</p>

The current information society is collecting information about individual needs, wants and desires continuously with the help of new technologies. Information systems, such as consumer relationship management (CRM) have a crucial importance when providing personalized services to the customers. This is done by gathering, storing, maintaining and distributing important consumer knowledge throughout the organization. (Chen &amp; Popovich, 2003) However as previous studies have shown, consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about threats to their personal privacy when new technologies are integrated into the society (e.g. Cranor et al, 1999; Kervenoael et al, 2007). As these emerging issues are becoming more common in the consumers’ daily lives, it is of great importance to discover their perceptions about it. Hence, the purpose of this study is to examine the consumers’ perception about their privacy and how they affiliate with their personal information being processed in various organizations. The theoretical framework suggests that several factors affects the consumers comfort in sharing personal information to companies, such as the physical environment of the organization, which type of information that is shared, what organization that stores and uses the information, the psychological distance the actors have to each other and how much control the consumers have over the use of their personal information. A selfadministered questionnaire was used to collect the data. The results showed that the majority of the respondents were concerned about the information that is gathered about them, which further emphasises the importance of this study. It was evident that the respondents were more willing to provide demographic and lifestyle information, rather than financial and purchase related information. The results also showed a variation depending on which organization that is considered. The various organizations were categorized into four different groups; Intimate distance, personal distance, social distance and public distance, depending on the respondents’ perceived comfort in sharing their personal information with them. Some significant differences were observed between the various demographic groups as well. One of the findings indicates that men appear to be more comfortable in sharing their personal information to certain companies in comparison to women, due to a higher intellectual risk-propensity. It is argued that the consumers concern for privacy is an important issue to consider for companies. In order to maintain a strong relationship with their customers it should be integrated as an essential part of their CRM-strategies to make their information gathering techniques more efficient.

<p dir="ltr">Virtual Reality (VR) has become a pivotal element in modern society, transforming interactions with digital content and interpersonal communication. As VR integrates into various sectors, understanding its forensic potential is crucial for legal, investigative, and security purposes. This involves examining the digital footprints and artifacts left by immersive technologies. While previous studies in digital forensics have primarily concentrated on traditional computing devices such as smartphones and computers, research on VR, particularly on specific devices like the Oculus Go, Meta Quest, and Meta Quest 2, has been limited. This thesis explores the digital forensics of VR, focusing on the Oculus Go, Meta Quest and Meta Quest 2, using tools like Magnet AXIOM and Wireshark. The research uncovers specific forensic and network-based artifacts from eight social community applications, revealing user personally identifiable information, application usage history, WiFi network details, and multimedia content. These findings have significant implications for legal proceedings and cybercrime investigations, highlighting the role these artifacts can play in influencing the outcome of cases. This research not only deepens our understanding of VR-related digital forensics but also sets the stage for further investigations in this rapidly evolving domain.</p>

This study1 addresses the key information technology issues of the age and its unintended consequences. The issues include social control by businesses, governments, and information age Star Chambers. The study focuses on a comparative analysis of data protection, data security, and information privacy (DPSIP) laws, regulations, and practices in five countries. The countries include Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The study addresses relevant international legal standards and justifications. This multidisciplinary analysis includes a systems thinking approach from a legal, business, governmental, policy, political theory, psychosocial, and psychological perspective. The study implements a comparative law and sociolegal research strategy. Historic, linguistic, and statistical strategies are applied. The study concludes with a next step proposal, based on the research, for the international community, the five countries in the study, and specifically, South Africa as it has yet to enact a sound DPSIP approach. / LL.D. (Laws)