An empirical analysis of SNS users and their privacy and security awareness of risks associated with sharing SNS profiles (online identities)

Abstract

Social networking sites (SNS) like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn now have hundreds of millions of users. In this paper a quantitative approach was used to analyse primary data collected about SNS users. Our findings show that SNS users are dominated by younger adults, higher education levels and higher income levels. SNSs are more likely to be used for maintaining existing friendships as opposed to establishing new friendships and for building business networks. SNS users either have poor levels of privacy and security awareness or high levels of complacency in relation to SNS profile sharing and sharing their identity online.