Understanding the Factors that Influence Adoption of Privacy Protection Features in Online Social Networks

Online social network (OSN) platforms are extensively used for communication using messages, posts, blogs, and tweets. People use these to share information with their network of friends, larger group of acquaintances, or even with the entire online world. In order to ensure that the information gets delivered only to the intended audience, it is important that the user knows exactly how and where the posted information gets shared. The OSNs incorporate certain privacy protection features which allow the users to manage the reach of their posted information. This study explores the effect of demography, motivations, and experiences of OSNs, on the use of such privacy protection features by Indian social network users. We have used a questionnaire based online survey to collect responses from 392 OSN users from India. The analysis of the data so collected show that user’s concerns and their experiences with mediating technology, rather than their demographic factors, motivate them to implement the OSNs’ privacy protection features. This study thus provides newer insights to OSN platforms for redesigning their strategies toward safeguarding privacy of their users, in the context of the users from India, and can possibly be extended to those from other developing countries sharing similar characteristics.