Exploring Social Media Privacy Preferences in Saudi Arabia

With the increase in the use of social networking apps in smartphones, users are increasingly concerned about the access of these apps to private and sensitive data which are highly valuable for users. Most of the prior studies assume the homogeneity of privacy preferences across users, yet these concerns differ from person to person based on many factors such as culture, age, and gender. Therefore, it is paramount to explore users' concerns for social media apps to design a system that meets and adopt users' needs and requirements. Accordingly, a questionnaire was designed that explores the most important preferences of users regarding social networking apps. Hence, the result of this study showed that users' concerns are not on one level but rather diverse and different. Moreover, age, gender and occupation play an essential role in different users' preferences. On the other hand, some demographic factors such as education and experience level do not represent a strong relationship with the level of privacy concerns.