Do Social Media Privacy Policies Matter? Evaluating the Effects of Familiarity and Privacy Seals on Cognitive Processing

News stories of security breaches and government surveillance have made Internet users more concerned about their privacy, translating perhaps to greater scrutiny of privacy policies of social media platforms and online application providers. The purpose of the research was to examine whether individuals unquestioningly accept the privacy policies of social media platforms and the extent to which individual information processing influences users' agreement. The Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) provided the theoretical framework for an experimental study that compared privacy policies from familiar and unfamiliar social media platforms that also varied in the presence of TRUSTe authentication signals. The results implicate heuristic processing where individuals, rather than examine the content of a policy, blindly comply in agreement. The heuristic effect was most pronounced when individuals were familiar with the social media platform. Surprisingly, the presence of a TRUSTe seal reduced decision confidence, and rather than stimulate heuristic processing, caused a more detailed assessment of the policy content.