I didn't know that: a cross-cultural comparison of Facebook users' privacy literacy

Abstract

The ubiquity of social network sites and the extensive information shared on these sites raises many questions about privacy. Despite the recognized importance of knowledge in consumer decision making, privacy knowledge has not been widely investigated and cross-cultural comparisons of this kind have not been undertaken. As such, the purpose of this paper is to explore and compare the privacy literacy of Facebook users in Canada and France in terms of subjective and objective privacy knowledge. Contrary to expectations, no significant differences were revealed between privacy literacy across cultures, yet descriptive results suggest many areas where privacy knowledge could be improved.