| Summary: | <p> Privacy, in the modern connected world, has become a much discussed topic in society ranging from privacy concerns to impacts, attitudes, practices and technologies. In today’s environment of vast social media and revelations of government spying, personal privacy is being highlighted as either non-existent or something that can be achieved to different degrees with knowledge or awareness of how our private information is collected and used. This research strives to answer the question <i>Using Alan Westin's privacy categories, what is the general awareness of privacy issues in social media and smartphone usage and how does it change when knowledge is provided over a fixed period of time?</i> A longitudinal study was conducted to collect data from 257 participants. Surprisingly, the percentages in each of the three categories: Privacy Fundamentalist, Privacy Pragmatist, and Privacy Unconcerned, are not significantly different from Westin’s last research in 2003. However, the results show, that with knowledge of what type of private information is collected and how it is used, the category of an individual is likely to change over time.</p><p>
|
|---|
