FACEBOOK - PRIVACY SETTINGS AND PERSONAL INFORMATION DISCLOSURE

The paper describes a social media experiment on correlation between Facebook profile privacy settings and willingness to share (disclose) personal information. A fictional Facebook profile was used to send friend requests and the reaction in relation to Facebook privacy settings was observed. For data evaluation Neural Network algorithm and Decision Tree were used. The essence of this work was to analyze 400 users divided into 4 groups (the first group had on Facebook real photo and real name, the second group had real photo but fake name, the third group had fake profile photo, but real name, and the last group had both examined factors false). The results indicate that people, who are willing to share more private information, such as real profile picture, education or phone number, are in fact also more open to new contacts. However, in relation to the profile name those users that have a fake name are more open to accept the friend request. Still, by and large all users are more likely to care about their privacy settings, as they make no or only a few private information visible.