A descriptive study from the perspective of employees working in the Ecommerce sector in Ireland into their use of the social networking site LinkedIn and its privacy concerns both online and in the workplace

The way in which technology has evolved in the past thirty years is staggering, and with it has brought new advancements in social networking sites online. The rapid growth of these sites, particularly LinkedIn, has had many advantages such as providing access to a wider network of potential employers, however the speed at which these sites are evolving is also causing problems. There are a multitude of dangers associated with sharing information online, most of which users are not made aware of when using the sites. This descriptive study aims to examine the behaviour of LinkedIn users online, particularly those working in the Ecommerce industry to find if they have an increased knowledge of how data is collected and used online from their daily interactions with data breaches. Drawing on theoretical concepts found in current literature, the researcher used a survey as the quantitative research method chosen to collect the data. The survey was sent to employees working for the online retailer Wayfair located in Galway, Ireland and a total of 100 responses were collected. This data was then inputted into Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) where a test was ran to validate the data. The results were then analyzed against the current literature surrounding the topic. The study was limited to employees working for one online retailer based in Ireland. To ensure there was no issue with the survey, a pilot test was conducted with ten participants prior to being sent to all Galway/Irish based employees. The results of this study found that while employees working in the Ecommerce sector felt they had more awareness about their security online, the majority of respondents still do not know how their data is being used online and continue to share a lot of personal information online. Further research should focus more on why users are not more vigilant on protecting their data, and why privacy policies are not easier to read and understand