Facebook Data: Sharing, Caring, and Selling

We investigate privacy concerns, privacy literacy, privacy behavior, the efficacy of privacy education and people's willingness to sell data in what is, to our knowledge, the first study to analyze subjects' entire Facebook data package in laboratory conditions. In pilot sessions with 46 participants we have found that subjects hold moderately high levels of privacy concern, have high knowledge of technical aspects of data protection and of protection strategies, yet only low to moderate knowledge of institutional practices and legislation. In line with the literature on the privacy paradox, high levels of privacy concern do not appear to be associated with a more parsimonious use of the social network site. Subjects having watched a video aimed at increasing their levels of privacy concern have sent fewer private messages, have effectively stopped sending pictures via private message and have rejected more friend requests compared to the control group in the two weeks after the session. They have, however, logged in on more devices, liked more pages and posts and posted more compared to the control group. Lastly, 63% of the subjects were willing to sell their Facebook data package to us, 79% of which did so for 10 US Dollars or less. Results from a more in-depth study with 300 participants are due to follow.