Data Privacy in Social Networks: Awareness and Exposure Issues

As various technological platforms and algorithms are getting more and more sophisticated and present in human lives, the data privacy is becoming one of the most sensitive issues in human-computer interaction. This paper presents a qualitative research on the level the young people in Kosovo are aware of the possible privacy violations in social networks, as well as on the degree they expose their private data in Facebook and Instagram. The data privacy awareness and exposure phenomena are time-varying, location-related, socially-dependent etc., which bring up the need for continuous surveys on this topic. While relying on best practices and actual privacy guidelines, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted. The study involves young population who are supposed to be mostly present/active in social networks. In this case for practical reasons, participants are mainly students of computer sciences. Generally, the results show relatively low awareness and high privacy exposure in social networks. Female participants show much higher awareness and concerns on data privacy. Somewhat paradoxically, they seem to expose much more of personal details in social networks