We currently post a large amount of personal information about ourselves on social media sites. Many times though, users of these services are poorly aware of what kind of terms and conditions they agree to. There are in fact many techniques available that ensure users privacy, yet not many organizations make the effort to have those in place. Making a profit is what matters for companies and information on users is highly valued. It is the lack of regulations regarding data collection that enable organizations not to consider their users privacy. The data that can be collected is vast, it is important to understand that everything we do online, every search, click, shop and view is stored and the information is many times sold along to third-parties. Using information on users, companies can make profit by for example making predictions on the users, figuring out what they are interested in buying. It is nevertheless very difficult to make long-lasting regulations as the web constantly changes and grows. A qualitative research was conducted to observe to what extent social media addiction and its consequences is being discussed and researched. Interviews with social media users were also conducted. After an analysis on the findings it is clear that many users in fact would like to have more privacy online yet they feel the need to accept the term and conditions any way. Many users also state that they happily would like to read the terms and conditions, had they been written in a different way.

The rise in usage of the internet in general and social media in particular has spurred an increase in the amount of spending on digital marketing. This in turn has led to new and innovative ways of conducting marketing online, one of which is called in-feed advertising. Visually, in-feed ads share the same features as their surrounding content. In terms of function, these ads collect data from consumers’ online activities in order to offer personalized ad content. While this field of study has started to be explored in recent times, there are still major gaps in existing literature. In particular, little to no research has been conducted in the area of consumers’ perception of in-feed advertisement, with regards to privacy-invasiveness and consumers’ willingness to make personal information available online to marketers for in-feed ads. The purpose of this thesis is to research consumer perception of the privacy-invasive aspects of in-feed ads, and examine what happens when consumers’ knowledge of the privacy-invasive data collection methods increases. The research method used was a semi-controlled field experiment which gathered quantitative and qualitative data from the experiment participants through questionnaires and group-held discussions. Our main findings show that consumers accept -sometimes reluctantly- the privacy-invasive procedures deployed by marketers online due to the added benefits of receiving personalized content online. Consumers do express concerns over their internet privacy, but seem unwilling to take measures to prevent privacy-invasive procedures due to a perceived inevitability towards having online activities tracked.

<p>Human-based social engineering attacks continue to grow in popularity, with increasing numbers of cases reported yearly. This can be accredited to the ease with which common social engineering attacks can be launched, and the abundance of information available online that attackers can use against their targets. Current mitigative strategies and awareness trainings against social engineering attacks incorporate an understanding of the major factors that influence individual susceptibility to social engineering attacks. These strategies emphasize an engagement in secure behaviors and practices, especially with respect to identifying the key indicators in any form of communication or situation that can classify it as a social engineering attack. There is also an emphasis on restricting the amount of information that individuals should share about themselves in workplace settings. However, these approaches do not comprehensively consider the different intrinsic motivations that individuals develop to engage in the protective behaviors necessary to assure their safety against social engineering attacks, regardless of environment. Individual attitudes and behaviors about online privacy could hold the key to defending oneself by way of restricting unwarranted access to associated information online. Psychological traits and attitudes developed in response to the perception of social engineering as a threat could act as motivators for engaging in privacy protective behaviors, which in turn could affect the extent to which an individual can protect themselves from social engineering attacks. This thesis investigates the role of privacy protective behaviors in impacting an individual’s susceptibility to social engineering attacks and the impacts of specific privacy factors as motivating antecedents to engagement in privacy protective behaviors.</p>

Sharenting has become closely intertwined with common parenting practices. The term is produced from sharing and parenting and it refers to personal information of children published by the child's guardian on social media. The security of children's online privacy is threatened, not only by third parties but also by their parents’ social media disclosures. This research studies the phenomenon sharenting from a perspective of informatics, focusing on parents' behaviors online. The aim is to further understand how Swedish parents use Photo Sharing Networking Services (PSNS) to perform sharenting, what consequences they are aware of and what measures they take to protect the safety and privacy of their children online. Using qualitative semistructured interviews to find deep, empirical data and comparing it to a theoretical framework using a thematic analysis, this study contributes with an understanding of Swedish parents' reasoning, as well as their attitudes regarding the subject. In total eight interviews have been conducted and the result shows that parents share content of their children online with the intention to connect with others, collect memories and enhance their self-presentation. The considered consequences of sharenting found among parents are the danger of third-parties, and the risk of creating an inaccurate identity of their child. To protect their children online, parents use privacy settings and limit the content, but also ask for the child’s consent before sharing. The results show that Swedish parents are aware of consequences and measures that can be used to protect the privacy of their children, but do not always consider them when sharenting. The contributions of this research consist of support for the development of future privacy guidelines and raising awareness on the topic.

The advent of the Internet has led to vastly increased levels of data accessibility to both users and would-be attackers. The privacy paradox is an established phenomenon wherein users express concern about resultant security and privacy threats to their data, but nevertheless fail to enact the host of protective measures that have steadily become available. The precise nature of this phenomenon, however, is not a settled matter. Fortunately, risk communication theory, a discipline devoted to understanding the factors involved in risk-oriented decision-making and founded in years of empirical research in public health and disaster awareness domains, presents an opportunity to seek greater insight into this problem. In this dissertation, we explore the application of principles and techniques from risk communication theory to the question of factors in the grassroots adoption of secure communication technologies. First, we apply a fundamental first-step technique in risk communication—mental modeling—toward understanding users' perceptions of the structure, function, and utility of encryption in day-to-day life. Second, we apply principles of risk communication to system design by redesigning the authentication ceremony and its associated messaging in the Signal secure messaging application. Third, we evaluate the applicability of a core decision-making theory—protection motivation theory—toward the problem of secure email adoption, and then use this framework to describe the relative impact of various factors on secure email adoption. Finally, we evaluate perceptions of risk and response with respect to the adoption of secure email features in email scenarios of varying sensitivity levels. Our work identifies positive outcomes with respect to the impact that risk messaging has on feature adoption, and mixed results with respect to comprehension. We highlight obstacles to users' mental interactions with encryption, but offer recommendations for progress in the adoption of encryption. We further demonstrate that protection motivation theory, a core behavioral theory underlying many risk communication approaches, has the ability to explain the factors involved in users' decisions to adopt or not adopt in a way that can at least partially explain the privacy paradox phenomenon. In general, we find that the application of even basic principles and techniques from risk communication theory do indeed produce favorable research outcomes when applied to this domain.

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A gap, known as the privacy paradox, often exists between peoples' privacy concerns and the actions they take to protect their privacy. This thesis investigates how a small sample of undergraduate students perceive their online privacy, the measures they take to protect their online privacy, and the reasons for their action/inaction. In so doing, it seeks to ascertain whether the findings of Hinds et al.'s (2020) regarding Facebook users' perceptions of online privacy issues are replicable among a sample of undergraduate students who are regular users of Instagram. Interviews with 20 undergraduate students were conducted to gather information about their online privacy concerns, their attitudes toward social media platforms collecting their information, and the privacy protection strategies they employ. The findings suggest that in enacting protection strategies, the participants delineate between both social and institutional conceptions of privacy, and the notion of privacy as a right requiring protecting versus viewing privacy as a negotiable commodity. This, in turn, suggests a possible need to re-consider how privacy-related education is approached as well as privacy policy.

No description available.

This thesis project presents a research through design process, that has aimed to investigate and challenge internet users’ perception and awareness around the theme of online privacy and third-party trackers. This has been done by designing a critical design artifact called PrivacyLamp which takes form as a classic lamp, that through a secondary (dis)functionality is designed to work as an mediation of potential third-par- ty-trackers activity on the user’s local network. PrivacyLamp has been developed through an iterative design process, guid- ed by relevant literature and works within the eld of critical design, physical data visualization, and design for re ection, which all have worked as a foundation for the design of such an artefact. The prototype has been evaluated together with six participants, who all adopted the prototype into their domestic settings to experience it as a part of their everyday life for a few days. The aim of this qualitative study has been to investigate how a defamiliarized domestic object can work as an ambient display to question the invisible ow of connec- tivity and its complication within online privacy, as well as the narratives and experiences users develops in relation to this.

<p dir="ltr">FemTech is a booming subset of mHealth applications that was worth $51 billion in 2021 (Stewart, 2022b). FemTech largely focuses on menstruation, pregnancy, and fertility tracking. As with any technology, it comes with privacy and security risks for users, but these risks are more acute due to the sensitive nature of the data being collected. While privacy and security shortcomings have been highlighted for years, concerns were discussed widely in the United States after the Supreme Court released its <i>Dobbs v. Jackson</i> decision on June 24, 2022, which overturned <i>Roe v. Wade</i>, a 1973 decision that protected abortion as a constitutional right and limited states’ abilities to place restrictions on abortions. With abortion no longer a constitutional right, many states have outlawed or heavily restricted the procedure, and individuals expressed concern about their digital data being used in investigations as it has been in select previous cases (e.g., <i>State of Indiana v. Purvi Patel</i>, 2015; <i>State of Mississippi v. Latice Fisher</i>, 2018; <i>The State of Nebraska v. Celeste Burgess</i>, 2023; <i>The State of Nebraska v. Jessica Burgess</i>, 2023). While Big Tech has been scrutinized for turning user data over to law enforcement, many have more heavily questioned the protections offered by period tracking app companies due to the abundant amount of health data these companies possess about their users (e.g., Basu, 2022; Bradley et al., 2022; Cole, 2022). These apps have historically fallen short in protections for their user data in general (e.g., Beilinson, 2020; <i>Developer of Popular Women’s Fertility-Tracking App Settles FTC Allegations That It Misled Consumers About the Disclosure of Their Health Data</i>, 2021; Quintin, 2017). Clue is one of the most popular FemTech apps with millions of downloads across the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and the company has spoken out widely about their privacy protections in the wake of the <i>Dobbs v. Jackson</i> decision (<i>‎Clue Period Tracker & Calendar</i>, n.d.; <i>Clue Period Tracker & Calendar</i>, n.d.; <i>Clue’s Response to Roe vs Wade Decision</i>, 2022). This research presents a forensic analysis of Clue on both iOS and Android after two months of data population, finding that some user-entered data was available in the app cache or .db-wal files on both iOS and Android but was entirely erased after the deletion of the app on the phones. This research also presents results from a survey of 31 menstruators in the United States, finding that online privacy in general is a concern for many users, and most find it unacceptable for period tracking applications to share user health data with advertisers or law enforcement.</p>