Privacy Concerns

The Reyman article touched on data mining and privacy. It seems like the law is not currently keeping up with technology and I personally think that this is going to cause some issues. No one seems to be able to know exactly where to draw the line. It is interesting to read about colleges and universities mining data in an effort to reduce violence on campus. Data can pretty much tell us anything that we want to know, but when does it become an overreaching invasion of privacy? How much control should companies and government entities be able to have over our privacy? Should we accept Zuckerberg’s claim that privacy is dead?

I found the discussion on ‘the terms of use’ interesting. They truly are extremely difficult to read. The Carnegie Mellon University analysis found that it would take the average user 76 workdays per year of reading to sift through all of the policies of every website that they visited. To add to the complexity, these terms of use are constantly changing. The lack of privacy is creating anxiety for many social media users these days. It seems like different users have different philosophies about privacy issues and ideas revolving around consent in the online world. I was wondering how these philosophies and concerns differ across cultures.

I found this article on global differences in information privacy concerns and it is worth a read. The authors suggest that there may be a need for localized privacy policies. There are certainly cultural differences when it comes down to privacy regulation. Some interesting findings from the article:

• ·       They found that privacy concerns decline with experience on the internet for users from all over the world.
• ·          There is a general global concern regarding government involvement in the regulation of information privacy.
• ·         Countries that had a history issues with government regulation were more likely to want more regulations on the data collection processes.
• ·         It was surprising to read that more collectivist cultures tend to have a greater acceptance to the fact that others are intruding on their privacy. However, two researchers found that students in Japan were more concerned with privacy than students in the US.
• ·         Americans were found to be twice as likely to have low privacy concerns as German residents were.
• ·         Online consumers from countries that did not have any sort of privacy regulations were much more concerned with the security of online transactions.

The internet population is constantly increasing and changing every day, so it will be cool to see how privacy concerns evolve around the world in different ways. How do you all feel about privacy online? Is it really a big concern or just an accepted fact that there is no privacy? I would like to also hear from some of you from other countries – do you notice any major differences in the way that US students view online privacy?

Bellman, S., Johnson, E. J., Kobrin, S. J., & Lohse, G. L. (2004). International Differences in Information Privacy Concerns: A Global Survey of Consumers. The Information Society, 20(5), 313-324. doi:10.1080/01972240490507956