August 2010
A Facebook Privacy Study (16 August 2010)

A Facebook Privacy Study

16 August 2010

We are conducting a study to compare the sharing intentions of Facebook users to their actual privacy settings. We developed a Facebook application that alerts users to potential privacy violations based on their responses to a survey. The application will ask you which information (work related, explicit, academic, etc.) you want to hide from which profiles (co-workers, faculty, family, etc.) and then compare this to your actual settings. Finally, you’ll be able to view a report of the inconsistencies (the application does not store the actual data, just that an inconsistency was identified).

To participate, install our Facebook application by going to http://apps.facebook.com/gotprivacy.

Please help us spread the word by inviting your friends to participate using this Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=146210565389973

If you have any questions, please contact Michelle Madejski (michelle.madejski at gmail.com) or Maritza Johnson (maritzaj at cs.columbia.edu) — or, of course, me. (Naturally, we have passed this study through the university’s Institutional Review Board.)