skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: When does data collection and use become a matter of concern? A cross cultural comparison of American and Dutch people’s privacy attitudes.
Around the world, people increasingly generate data through their everyday activities. Much of this also happens unwittingly, thanks to sensors, cameras, and other surveillance tools on the roads, in cities, and in businesses. However, the ways citizens and governments think about privacy vary significantly around the world. In this paper, we explore differences between citizens’ attitudes toward privacy and data collection practices in the U.S. and the Netherlands, an EU member nation. Using a factorial vignette survey methodology, we identify specific contextual factors associated with people’s level of concern about how their data is being used. We consider the role that five factors play in this assessment: actors (those using data), data type and amount, reported purpose for data use, and inferences drawn from the data. These indicate nationally bound differences but likewise point to potentially more globally shared concerns.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1947754
PAR ID:
10176662
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Annals of the International Communication Association
ISSN:
2380-8985
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Around the world, people increasingly generate data through their everyday activities. Much of this happens unwittingly through sensors, cameras, and other surveillance tools on roads, in cities, and at the workplace. However, how individuals and governments think about privacy varies significantly around the world. In this article, we explore differences between people’s attitudes toward privacy and data collection practices in the United States and the Netherlands, two countries with very different regulatory approaches to governing consumer privacy. Through a factorial vignette survey deployed in the two countries, we identify specific contextual factors associated with concerns regarding how personal data are being used. Using Nissenbaum’s framework of privacy as contextual integrity to guide our analysis, we consider the role that five factors play in this assessment: actors (those using data), data type, amount of data collected, reported purpose of data use, and inferences drawn from the data. Findings indicate nationally bound differences as well as shared concerns and indicate future directions for cross-cultural privacy research. 
    more » « less
  2. The promises of smart cities continue to overwhelm many people eager to live in them. Simultaneously, many people are still concerned about the increasing privacy risks associated with the core of the promises. The core of smart cities’ promises lies in generating and using data to enable urban technologies that provide, to some degree, value-added services and opportunities for both cities and their citizens. The promises of smart cities highlight three interdependent dimensions, namely the information type, purpose, and value that provide the basis of studying and addressing privacy concerns to enable successful smart cities. This paper presents a 3D privacy framework based on three interdependent dimensions that build on existing citizens’ privacy models [1] and framework [2] to hypothesize when citizens are likely to accept smart city technologies with privacy concerns, when citizens are more likely to accept trading their privacy for the provided valued services under defined regulations, and when citizens are likely to protest and disregard smart cities technologies altogether. The 3D privacy framework highlights new ways of evaluating how technologies impact citizens’ privacy and encourages adopting new ways to lessen citizens’ privacy concerns by implementing technology-specific agile regulation based on the metrics of security. Some specific examples of smart city technologies are discussed to illustrate the practicality and usefulness of the proposed 3D privacy framework in the smart cities’ space. 
    more » « less
  3. Public responsiveness to policy is contingent on there being a sufficient amount of clear and accurate information about policy available to citizens. It is of some significance then, that there are increasing concerns about limits being placed on media outlets around the world. We examine the impact of these limits on the public’s ability to respond meaningfully to policy by analyzing cross-national variation in the opinion–policy link. Using new measures on spending preferences from Wave 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, merged with OECD data on government spending and Freedom House measures of press freedom, we assess the role of mass media in facilitating public responsiveness. We find evidence that when media are weak, so too is public responsiveness to policy. These results highlight the critical role that accurate, unfettered media can play in modern representative democracy. 
    more » « less
  4. Furnell, Steven (Ed.)
    A huge amount of personal and sensitive data is shared on Facebook, which makes it a prime target for attackers. Adversaries can exploit third-party applications connected to a user’s Facebook profile (i.e., Facebook apps) to gain access to this personal information. Users’ lack of knowledge and the varying privacy policies of these apps make them further vulnerable to information leakage. However, little has been done to identify mismatches between users’ perceptions and the privacy policies of Facebook apps. We address this challenge in our work. We conducted a lab study with 31 participants, where we received data on how they share information in Facebook, their Facebook-related security and privacy practices, and their perceptions on the privacy aspects of 65 frequently-used Facebook apps in terms of data collection, sharing, and deletion. We then compared participants’ perceptions with the privacy policy of each reported app. Participants also reported their expectations about the types of information that should not be collected or shared by any Facebook app. Our analysis reveals significant mismatches between users’ privacy perceptions and reality (i.e., privacy policies of Facebook apps), where we identified over-optimism not only in users’ perceptions of information collection, but also on their self-efficacy in protecting their information in Facebook despite experiencing negative incidents in the past. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on the gap between users’ privacy perceptions around Facebook apps and the reality. The findings from this study offer directions for future research to address that gap through designing usable, effective, and personalized privacy notices to help users to make informed decisions about using Facebook apps. 
    more » « less
  5. null (Ed.)
    While online developer forums are major resources of knowledge for application developers, their roles in promoting better privacy practices remain underexplored. In this paper, we conducted a qualitative analysis of a sample of 207 threads (4772 unique posts) mentioning different forms of personal data from the /r/androiddev forum on Reddit. We started with bottom-up open coding on the sampled posts to develop a typology of discussions about personal data use and conducted follow-up analyses to understand what types of posts elicited in-depth discussions on privacy issues or mentioned risky data practices. Our results show that Android developers rarely discussed privacy concerns when talking about a specific app design or implementation problem, but often had active discussions around privacy when stimulated by certain external events representing new privacy-enhancing restrictions from the Android operating system, app store policies, or privacy laws. Developers often felt these restrictions could cause considerable cost yet fail to generate any compelling benefit for themselves. Given these results, we present a set of suggestions for Android OS and the app store to design more effective methods to enhance privacy, and for developer forums(e.g., /r/androiddev) to encourage more in-depth privacy discussions and nudge developers to think more about privacy. 
    more » « less