Bridging the privacy paradox between awareness and behaviour: a survey inquiring in users self-reported and actual practices of Facebook applications.

The privacy paradox is the difference between attitudes and actual behaviour of respondents with regard to information disclosure practices (Acquisti & Grossklags, 2005). This is due to an over reliance on surveys questioning self-stated practices and opinions instead of actual behaviour (Preibusch, 2010). However, little research has been done on the relation between awareness and actual behaviour regarding privacy practices. This is problematical on both societal and scientific levels as the data are but a report on stated practices that may misinform policy decision-making. We address this challenge by confronting respondents' awareness with their actual behaviour through Facebook's applications settings page.
Our research objectives are to map the awareness of users with regard to their information disclosure with Facebook's applications. We then wish to compare this to their actual behaviour. It is after all possible users over- or underestimate the amount of personal data they share with applications. Next, we question their attitudes towards their sharing habits. The difference between perceived and actual behaviour will give us a more clear understanding of users' capabilities with regard to applications. The theoretical framework applied to this research approaches privacy settings a privacy as control paradigm, where users choose to share their information according to specific rules, which are to be respected at all times (Diaz & Gürses, 2012; King, Lampinen, & Smolen, 2011; Nissenbaum, 2004; Westin, 1970).
For the empirical part an online survey is designed to gather input from university students (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) in the beginning of 2013. In order to bridge the gap between perceived and actual information disclosure, we will first ask users to answer questions with regard to their disclosure in relation with a specific Facebook application of their choosing. In the next step we ask users to look up the privacy settings of the application and give an overview of what information is shared with this application. Lastly, we ask them to compare both types of answers in order to understand the gap, but also to map their attitudes and reasons for having this gap. Our choice to select Facebook's application platform is motivated by the fact that it is quite easy to understand and uniform for many applications. This means that the categories of information sharing practices are limited, which renders them easier to compare. Our method will be easier to adapt to other application platforms such as Google Play and Apple iOS. The Facebook application platform is furthermore rather transparent in displaying all of an apps formal disclosure practices.
As previously mentioned, our approach is relevant to the field of privacy research because it proposes a means to mitigate the challenges posed by self reported behaviour. It is also important to note that only limited research has been done about users' disclosure practices for apps except for a recent US survey (King, 2011). On a more pragmatic level we would like to see whether a perfect fit between app owners and users is possible, and if so what kind of flows of information could be part of this balance and what not.
With this research we aim to better ground the linkages between awareness and behaviour with regard to specific social media applications. The approach is innovative because the focus shifts from attitudes to awareness through the reliance on specific applications. By comparing the perceived and the actual information disclosure, we avoid to rely solely on users' self-reported behaviour. The possibility to include capabilities and attitudes will further our understanding of the reason why users protect their privacy less or more than they think they do.