Recent studies have find out that nine out of ten people in the Netherlands are somewhat active on social media platforms. This means that all these people have registered themselves on these social media sites. Nowadays, we are almost obligated to fill in personal information on sites in order to obtain certain context. Whether it is on social media sites or in web shops to order products, we need to register and fill in user details. Just think about it. You want to buy a pair of jeans online: you have to at least fill in your name and address. You want to log in on FB: you have to fill in your name and your email-address. And we almost always fill it in, just like that. Most people don’t even give it a second thought; they feel it is completely normal to give their personal data.
People have to make a trade-off between positive network externalities and negative network externalities. Positive network externality is the phenomenon that the value of the network to each user increases. Negative network externality is the concept of increasing privacy concerns that people experience when registering on a site.
In the article ‘What drives website registration (2016)’, the authors gave several advantages of user registration. The first advantage of users is that they are able to get access to a restricted area. A second advantage is that they can receive personalized advertisements. There are also disadvantages. A negative effect of registering is the fact that it is making it easier for others to invade people’s privacy through trolling, stalking and cyber bullying. Besides that, it also makes it easier to become a victim of identity theft. An advantage of user registration for websites is that it is a way to gather all kinds of information to be more efficient and to target customers. It is also a tool to develop closer relationship with users. The disadvantage for websites is that they can get in serious problems when personal data is stolen from the server.
The above-mentioned advantages are the reason why a lot of people enter their data on sites. However, we don’t know what these sites are going to do with our data. For example: Facebook started using data from their messaging app in order for their advertisers to better targets Facebook users. Facebook users were not aware of this. There is always a chance for loss of privacy when private information on a site is being stolen or misused. Websites try to convince customers that the data they enter will be safe with trying to build trust. They do this with showing popularity information, such as the number of registered users on a site, and/ or with Word of Mouth information that shows credibility.
There are obviously advantages and disadvantages of registering on websites. The most important lesson here is that sites have to protect their customer data as good as possible. Do you perceive providing personal information on a site to be risky? Do you ever think about what might happen when your personal data would be stolen?
Sources:
Li, T., and Pavlou, P. 2016. What Drives Users’ Website Registration? The Network Externalities versus Information Privacy Dilemma
Oosterveer, D (2016), Social media in Nederland 2016: Whatsapp overstijft Facebook, http://www.marketingfacts.nl/berichten/social-media-in-nederland-2016-whatsapp-overstijgt-facebook
Robertsen, A (2016), Protecting our privacy privacy online, http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/editorial/protecting-our-privacy-online
Dear Lianne, Thank you for your post! I have seen several blogs which all come down to the same thing: the privacy calculus. The privacy calculus means the trade-off a user faces when deciding whether or not to disclose information. And I am guessing for most people, they perceive the risk of losing privacy as so small, that the benefit of registration usually wins. For example, a lot of group projects are done through Facebook, so it would be inconvenient not to have Facebook, thus people remain registred despite knowing potential risk. The same goes for ordering online: it is very convenient, so people just trust that their data are safe and enjoy the dress they just bought.
Hopefully websites will indeed handle our data with care, and hopefully governments will enforce and make laws which require them to do so.
Thank you for this very interesting post! I’m one of those people who actually never thinks about the risks of filling in my information. This post really got me thinking, because what would you do if your identity is stolen. That would be a total disaster. In the future i would definitely think twice before filling in all the information.
I think a lot of people are like me, and don’t think about the consequences of doing so. The social media platforms have a lot of access to all that information. When I think about it, I kind of get a little afraid. In the near future I would defenitely think twice. Thanks for the good post.
There are multiple ways you can regain your online privacy: you can use a plugin like privacy badger (by the EFF)
https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web. If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser. To the advertiser, it’s like you suddenly disappeared.
Or you could for example edit your fb add preferences:
https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences
By the way: that page above lists all categories facebook has put you in. It’s quite creepy. It has categories like “friends recently moved” etc. You can click the small cross to the right to remove the category from your ad ‘preferences’.