PPM: A Privacy Prediction Model for Online Social Networks

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have come to play an increasingly important role in our social lives, and their inherent privacy problems have become a major concern for users. Can we assist consumers in their privacy decision-making practices, for example by predicting their preferences and giving them personalized advice? To this end, we introduce PPM: a Privacy Prediction Model, rooted in psychological principles, which can be used to give users personalized advice regarding their privacy decision-making practices. Using this model, we study psychological variables that are known to affect users’ disclosure behavior: the trustworthiness of the requester/information audience, the sharing tendency of the receiver/information holder, the sensitivity of the requested/shared information, the appropriateness of the request/sharing activities, as well as several more traditional contextual factors.