From the early days of the information economy, personal data has been its most valuable asset. Despite data protection laws and an acknowledged right to privacy, trading personal information has become a business equated with "trading oil". Most of this business is done without the knowledge and active informed consent of the people. But as data breaches and abuses are made public through the media, consumers react. They become irritated about companies' data handling practices, lose trust, exercise political pressure and start to protect their privacy with the help of technical tools. As a result, companies' Internet business models that are based on personal data are unsettled. An open conflict is arising between business demands for data and a desire for privacy. As of 2015 no true answer is in sight of how to resolve this conflict. Technologists, economists and regulators are struggling to develop technical solutions and policies that meet businesses' demand for more data while still maintaining privacy. Yet, most of the proposed solutions fail to account for market complexity and provide no pathway to technological and legal implementation. They lack a bigger vision for data use and privacy. To break this vicious cycle, we propose and test such a vision of a personal information market with privacy. We accumulate technical and legal measures that have been proposed by technical and legal scholars over the past two decades. And out of this existing knowledge, we compose something new: a four-space market model for personal data.

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.

Consumers have begun to take a more proactive approach to their healthcare by accessing pharmaceutical companies Websites to obtain health and drug information, support groups, rebates, coupons, as well as free drug trials. In exchange for these benefits, companies require consumers to voluntarily disclose information. However, research has shown that consumers continue to be concerned about how their information is managed, used, and distributed by companies, especially if accessed via the Web. To date, there has been limited empirical research to examine the actual online practices of companies when it comes to privacy, especially those of pharmaceutical companies. Using Delphi expert panel process, the components of a benchmarking index were identified to examine the documented and actual online practices of 100 Website registrations with pharmaceutical companies. The evolution for the development of an index to measure the personal information privacy violations of pharmaceutical companies is presented. Second, empirical evidence is provided regarding the magnitude of voluntary adherence to the Fair Information Practices (FIPs) by pharmaceutical companies based upon the personal information privacy violations. The results revealed that companies with headquarters in Europe had fewer personal information privacy violations than those in Asia, UK, and the US. Moreover, the results indicate that fewer personal information privacy violations occur for chronic conditions than for non-chronic conditions, as well as fewer violations occur with Website registrations for updates than for discounts. Finally, both Europe and UK demonstrated more overall adherence to FIPs than the US and Asia. This suggests that self-regulation may not be sufficient, while more enforcement may be necessary to decrease personal information privacy violations.