Contexts and Sharing/Not Sharing Private Information

No matter how discreet people are they tend to share private information with the people they trust. They also expose information when sharing the information is relevant to the situation or to the requestor. Our study deals with finding out in what contexts people share or do not share certain kind of private information elements. The analyses of our study showed that the context really matters when an individual decides to share information. Based on different contexts and private information, we analyzed what contexts prove effective in getting certain private information elements. It turns out that people trust other people who are close to them and would share private information elements in cases when it is appropriate to expose the information such as helping the trusted person or when they themselves would benefit from the exposure. We conclude that the combination of a trusted person and relevant context is enough to gather sufficient private information about a person, which may be against the owner of the information.