Privacy Expectations of Social Media Users: The Role of Informed Consent in Privacy Policies

Custers B.H.M., Hof S. van der & Schermer B. (2014), Privacy Expectations of Social Media Users: The Role of Informed Consent in Privacy Policies, Policy and Internet 6(3): 268-295

23 Pages Posted: 5 Oct 2017 Last revised: 7 Oct 2017

See all articles by Bart Custers

Bart Custers

Leiden University - Center for Law and Digital Technologies

Simone van der Hof

Leiden University - Leiden Law School

Bart Willem Schermer

Leiden Law School

Date Written: 2014

Abstract

Social media process (sometimes large amounts of) personal data of their users, usually on the basis of informed consent. In this article, a comparison is made between, on the one hand, existing practices of social media regarding informed consent for using personal data of users and, on the other hand, user expectations with regard to privacy and informed consent. The comparison is made on the basis of a set of criteria for informed consent distilled from an analytical bibliography. Next, the privacy policies of a selection of eight social network sites and user generated content sites are analyzed using this set of criteria for informed consent. User expectations regarding these criteria were derived from survey results of a large EU-wide online survey (N¼8,621, 26 countries) on the awareness, values, and attitudes of social media users regarding privacy. We find that not all privacy policy criteria are important to users, but most criteria that are important to users can be found in most privacy policies.

Keywords: Informed Consent, Privacy Policy, User Expectations, Social Media

Suggested Citation

Custers, Bart and van der Hof, Simone and Schermer, Bart Willem, Privacy Expectations of Social Media Users: The Role of Informed Consent in Privacy Policies (2014). Custers B.H.M., Hof S. van der & Schermer B. (2014), Privacy Expectations of Social Media Users: The Role of Informed Consent in Privacy Policies, Policy and Internet 6(3): 268-295, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3047163

Bart Custers (Contact Author)

Leiden University - Center for Law and Digital Technologies ( email )

2300 RA Leiden, NL-2300RA
Netherlands

Simone Van der Hof

Leiden University - Leiden Law School ( email )

P.O. Box 9520
2300 RA Leiden, NL-2300RA
Netherlands

HOME PAGE: http://www.linkedin.com/vanderhof

Bart Willem Schermer

Leiden Law School ( email )

P.O. Box 9520
2300 RA Leiden, NL-2300RA
Netherlands

HOME PAGE: http://law.leidenuniv.nl/org/metajuridica/elaw/

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