1. Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln –
University of Applied Science /
University of Cologne
Christian Bosau
Privacy protection as a matter of trust:
How trust in Facebook and trust in
friends lead to different behaviour in
social networks

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Privacy and Facebook

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Privacy and Facebook
source: „Die Zeit“, No. 34, 14.08.2013
29 people
in a small office
in small Portarlington
in the middle of nowhere in Irland
à control whether Facebook
follows the lax irish data privacy
laws

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Purpose of the study
Main purpose: Looking into trust and the members‘ reaction in social
networks a bit deeper
Aspects about Facebook:
• members are aware of privacy risks (Bosau, Becks & Aelker, 2009; Bosau, Fischer & Koll, 2008)
• still à huge amount of usage
• members try out different protection strategies to lower privacy risks (Young & Quan-
Haase, 2009)
• members restrict their profile (Utz & Krämer, 2009), however mostly to their “friends”-list
• but what about information management?
The importance of privacy concerns & trust:
• how people generally think about privacy and whether they trust the
requestor influences how much information they give online (Joinson, Reips,
Buchanan & Paine-Schofield, 2010)

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Two agents to be trusted
The platform provider (e.g. Facebook):
• many reports discuss the misbehaviour of Facebook regarding privacy issues
• people know the risk, but don’t care?
The “friends”:
• users add numerous people to their friends-list, even people, that are not close
friends
• managing the increasing number of different kinds of “friends” becomes an issue
Main question: Who is the requestor, i.e. the communication partner in
a social network?

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The study
Method:
• online questionnaire (posted via mailing-lists and personal emails,
snowball sampling) in February/March 2012
• 270 participants
• age: mean=24,8 SD=5,4 male=24%, female=76%
Former studies:
§ measurement of privacy
concerns, privacy protection
behaviour & information
dissemination separately
This study:
§ combining the different
aspects in one single study
§ differentiation between two
trust agents
Research question / hypotheses:
• Trust in Facebook and trust in “friends” are two separate factors.
• How do the different kinds of trust (in “friends” & in Facebook) matter, when it
comes to protecting the privacy in a social network?
à dependent variable: privacy protection behaviour in Facebook

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The dependent variables
Information input
• Question: “Which of the following
informational aspects have you put
into your profile?”
• Scale: 0 = no vs. 1 = yes
• 11 items, summed up to a single
indicator à amount of information
• e.g.
“birthday”
“address & home town”
“name”
“relationship status”
“gender”
“favourite music/hobbies/interests”
“profile picture”
Information deletion
• based on Young & Quan-Haase
(2009), additional up-to-date aspects
were added
• Scale: 1 = never vs. 5 = very often
• Cronbach’s α = .86
• 9 items
• e.g.
“I have deleted unpleasant pictures
from my profile.”
“I have deleted unpleasant comments
of myself.”
“I have deleted other’s comments on
my profile.”
“I have told others to delete pictures
that I found unpleasant.”

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The predictors
Sociodemographic control factors:
Age
General privacy concern & behaviour (Reips, U.-D., Buchanan, T., & Oostlander, J. ,2008, 2010):
Gender
Attitude
Behaviour
Technical Protection
Behaviour
General Caution
Additional predictors:
privacy concerns in FB
(e.g. boyd & Ellison, 2008)
No. of “friends”
Trust (based on Joinson, Reips, Buchanan & Paine-Schofield, 2010):
in “friends” in Facebook

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General privacy concern:
• Scale by Reips, U.-D., Buchanan, T., & Oostlander, J. ,2008, 2010)
• Attitude: 16 Items (Cronbach’s α = .88):
• e.g. “Are your afraid of online identity theft”, “Are you afraid that someone could steal your credit
card number online”
• Behaviour – General Concern: 6 Items (Cronbach’s α = .70):
• e.g. “Do you hide your PIN-code at an ATM”, “Do you read the data security terms and conditions
before you register”
• Behaviour – Technical Protection: 6 Items (Cronbach’s α = .74):
• e.g. “Do you delete cookies”, “Do you use a pop-up-blocker”
The additional predictors
Specific privacy concerns in Facebook:
• Scale developed based on boyd & Ellison (2008) and Debatin, Lovejoy, Horn &
Hughes (2009)
• Question “Which problems or threats do you see when using Facebook?”
• Scale: 1 = can happen hardly vs. 5 = can happen very easily
• 14 Items (Cronbach’s α = .85):
• Focusing on the major concerns or threats named in the literature:
• e.g. “damaged reputation due to rumors and gossip“; “hacking or identity theft“; “phishing“;
“surveillance-like structures due to backtracking“
“consumer-profiling”

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Differences in trust
3,34
2,36
2
2,5
3
3,5
4
trust
in "friends" in Facebook
Trust:
• Scale: 1 = low trust vs. 5 = high trust
• 8 Items (Joinson, Reips, Buchanan &
Paine-Schofield, 2010):
• Focusing on the major
dimensions of trust:
Benevolence, Competence,
Reliability, Integrity, General Trust
• e.g.
„The intensions of ... are good“;
„... is/are trustworthy“;
„... is/are dependable“;
„I felt comfortable giving my
personal information to ...“
• Facebook Cronbach’s α = .83
• „Friends“ Cronbach’s α = .89
F(1) = 297,33; p < .00; η² = 0,52
Important:
§ r = .11 (no sig.)
è no correlation of the two scales
è two independent aspects

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No. of “friends“ .00 .00 .16***
Regression analysis - Input
unstandar-
dized B
SE standardized Beta
Age .02 .02 .05
Gender (male=1; female=2) .09 .26 .02
• dependent variable: amount of profile information in Facebook
• stepwise regression analysis
• R2 (adj.) = .15
* p < .10, ** p < .05, *** p < .01
Trust – in Facebook .82 .18 .30***
Trust – in “friends“ .32 .14 .13**
Attitude – Privacy Concern -.05 .17 -.02
Behaviour – General Caution -.02 .15 -.01
Behaviour – Technical Protection -.00 .13 -.00
Facebook privacy concerns .18 .19 .07

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No. of “friends“ .00 .00 .24***
Regression analysis - Deletion
unstandar-
dized B
SE standardized Beta
Age -.01 .01 -.06
Gender (male=1; female=2) .27 .12 .14**
• dependent variable: privacy protection behaviour – deletion of information
• stepwise regression analysis
• R2 (adj.) = .13
* p < .10, ** p < .05, *** p < .01
Trust – in Facebook -.12 .09 -.09
Trust – in “friends“ -.17 .07 -.15**
mean =
2.36 !!
Attitude – Privacy Concern .10 .08 .09
Behaviour – General Caution -.02 .07 -.02
Behaviour – Technical Protection .09 .06 .09
Facebook privacy concerns -.06 .09 -.05

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Conclusion
The “friends” in Facebook are a new important issues
• trust in “friends” and trust in Facebook are two independent factors
• trust in “friends” is quite high, while trust in Facebook is very low
• the huge number of “friends” comprises the risk of not being able to predict the
behaviour of all “friends”
Different kinds of trust lead to different kind of privacy protection
behaviour
• low trust in “friends” leads to more protection behaviour in terms of deleting
information regarding likes, comments & pictures
• low trust in Facebook leads to higher withholding of profile information, but has no
influence if the information is already in Facebook
Other results:
• general attitudes about privacy are to abstract and broad to be able to predict
specific behaviour; though, specific Facebook concerns to not lead to protection
either

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Privacy and Facebook

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Thank you very much for your attention!
Comments and questions can be sent to:
Prof. Dr. Christian Bosau
bosau@rfh-koeln.de