Strategies and Struggles with Privacy in an Online Social Networking Community

Online social networking communities such as Facebook and MySpace are extremely popular. These sites have changed how many people develop and maintain relationships through posting and sharing personal information. The amount and depth of these personal disclosures have raised concerns regarding online privacy. We expand upon previous research on users’ under-utilization of available privacy options by examining users’ current strategies for maintaining their privacy, and where those strategies fail, on the online social network site Facebook. Our results demonstrate the need for mechanisms that provide awareness of the privacy impact of users’ daily interactions.