Questionnaire Result :
Data Collection based on Facebook Profile in Public Setting
Basic information required to set up Facebook account includes : name, gender, email address and date of birth. The questionnaire asked participants to view their profile as public (using option View As) and specify which data types they provide on their profile. Only 4 types of information is essential to have an account however our questionnaire asked for 17 different types of information.
Results above show that majority of individuals share more than the basic fields required to set up the account. Information individuals were least likely to show to public is email and political views followed phone number.
This questionnaire served to prove the concept and demonstrate that it is possible to harvest large amounts of personal data from Facebook profiles.
Mentimeter Result
The results from the online survey carried out using mentimeter show that 55% of participants were female and 45% were male, all within the age group of 22-24.
When asked about their Facebook scree time 52% of respondents say they use it for less than hour a day, 33% say they use it for 1-2 hours,10% uses it for 2-3 hours and only 5% uses it for more than 4 hours a day.
Given options such as Scrolling, Posting , Texting Family and Friends, Looking at memes, business and other, 38% of participants say they use the platform to look at memes and for scrolling, 19% uses it for texting friends and family and only 5% uses it to post.
We asked the users to indicate their level of concern for each data type (10 meaning very concerned and 0 meaning not concerned not all). The results indicated the following levels of concern :(6.8) Phone (5.8) Email (3.2) Current Town (3.1) Family members (2.9) Hometown (2.9) School (2.8) Political Views (2.7) University (1.8) Date of Birth (1.7) Religion (1.6) Profile Pic (1.6) Sexual Orientation (1.3) Name (1.3) Gender (1) Relationship Status. The table above shows the results (left hand side) and table on the right shows the information that is most given away against the information users and most concerned about.
Furthermore, we asked participants if they read the terms and conditions of Facebook, to which 100% answered 'No'. All participants agreed they are concerned about their online privacy, Facebook using their data without their permission and the possibility of Facebook intruding their privacy.
Next part of the survey was the 9 question true or false quiz, all statements included in this quiz were extracts from Facebook actual Privacy Policy and therefore were all true. All participants fully agreed that only 2 of the following statements were true (1) Facebook collects and uses all information they receive about youth suggest ads for you and (2) Facebook uses face recognition technology to recognise you in photos, videos and camera content. Statement that was least believed to be true by all participants was 'Facebook doesn't sell your personal data to advertisers, and they don't share information that directly identifies you unless you give permission' which achieved a 55% score for being 'False'.
Once we made all participants aware that the statements were true we asked if prior to this survey they were aware of the amount of information Facebook gathers to which 70% answered 'Yes' and only 40% said 'No'. Furthermore when asked whether they are now more concerned about the information they give away and their online privacy, 45% of participants said 'Yes' while the remaining 55% said 'No'. Lastly when questioned whether this affect what information they continue to post and share 55% of participants said 'Yes' and the remaining 45% answered 'No'.
Conclusion
Our questionnaire served as a proof of concept which demonstrates that it is possible to harvest large amount of personal data from Facebook profile as majority of respondents share more information with the public than the essential criteria required to have an account.
Our online survey however indicated that most respondents are in fact concerned with their online privacy and some information is more guarded than other. The level of concern correlates to the data gathered in the questionnaire which shows that for certain data type the level of concern is high and individuals are less likely to give this away to the public, such information includes contact and location related information. This may be due to the perception that Facebook sells personal data to advertisers and that this information can be used to spam them. 55% of individuals did not believe the following statement was in fact true 'Facebook doesn't sell your personal data to advertisers, and they don't share information that directly identifies you unless you give permission'. This showed a lack of understanding for Facebook data collection and sharing process and also raised questions. If majority of participants believed identifiable data on them is sold on a question can be asked as to why despite this they still willingly provide their personal information.
Furthermore, all participants indicated that they haven't read the Terms and Conditions of Facebook yet majority claimed they knew about what data Facebook collects from them. The quiz results however showed a lack of knowledge and understanding regarding Facebook policy as only 2 out of 9 real statements were believed to be true by all participants. This also leads to a question of where the users gained the knowledge they have and how well they understand the impact of their actions online on their privacy.
At the end most respondents indicated their level of concern didn't increase despite their new knowledge regarding Facebook data collection processes but once asked whether this new knowledge will affect what they share on the platform majority responded with 'Yes'. This leads to a question of what caused this behavior if the level of concern for privacy didn't increase. The word concern can however be interpreted differently by every person therefore the question was subjective to respondents interpretation.
Limitations
The interpretation of word concern and how it means different things to different audience therefore answers are subjective to respondents interpretations. The anonymity of the research means we can't correlate the levels of concern to the amount of information given away by the individual and determine whether it was caused by the lack understanding on Facebook privacy terms.