“Identify the impact of social media networks

upon user privacy”

A Project Report
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the Course of Research Method to
Dr. Irfan Hameed
At the Iqra University, Main Campus

Wednesday (6:30pm – 9:00pm)

Class Day & Time: ____________________________

Karachi, Pakistan.
DECEMBER 16, 2015

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 Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Almighty Allah that through our prayers to him, our report is

Alhamdulillah completed.

We are very blessed to have our respected Sir Dr. Irfan Hameed as our Course

Instructor, without him we couldn’t have completed this report. It’s all because of his

determination, support, guidance and passion to teach us Research Methodology in

proper manner and assigning this project of “Research Methodology” of doing

research on our topic “Impact of Social Media on User’s Privacy” which helped in

strengthening our knowledge regarding tools and technique to conduct research,

evaluate and interpret the result. And we would also like to thank him for giving us

opportunity to comprehend the basic knowledge of “Research Methodology”

We are extremely thankful and would like to express our gratitude to our respected

SIR Dr. IRFAN HAMEED for guiding, encouraging and supporting us through this

course.

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 Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of social media networks upon user

privacy. The social privacy have different sources that are used by social web sites to

collect their user personal information. The source used are cookies files,

Datavelliance, terms and conditions and the information disclosure. The hypotheses

that were develop were that cookies files, Datavelliance, and information disclosure

have negative relationship with the user privacy and terms and conditions have

positive relationship with user privacy. The findings generated were that cookies

files, Datavelliance and terms and conditions had positive relationship with the user

privacy and Information Disclosure had negative relationship with user privacy.

The data were collected from a sample of 100 students of IQRA University

which were selected by using the sampling method of Convenience Sampling. The

data was collected by self administed closed end questionnaire. As conclude the

cookies files and dataviellances have don’t affect the user privacy. It also concluded

that term and conditions and information disclosure affects on user privacy.

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 TABLES OF CONTENT
S.No. DESCRIPTION PAGE
NO.

1 Acknowledgements ii
2 Abstract iii
3 List of Tables v
4 List of Figures vi
5 Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Overview
1.2 Problem statement
1.3 Background
1.3.1 Objective
1.3.2 Significance of the study
1.4 Outline of the study
1.5 Definitions
6 Chapter 2: Literature Review
7 Chapter 3: Research Methods
3.1 Method of Data Collection
3.2 Sampling Technique
3.3 Sample size
3.4 Instrument of data collection
3.5 Research Model Develop
3.6 Statistical Technique
8 Chapter 4: Results
4.1 Findings and Interpretation of the results
4.2 Hypotheses Assessment Summary
9 Chapter 5: Discussions, Conclusion, Policy Implications and Future Research
5.1 Discussion
5.2 Conclusion
5.3 Policy Implications
5.4 Future Research
10 References
11 Appendix

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 LIST OF TABLES

S. DESCRIPTION PAGE
NO. NO.
1. 4.1.1 Regression Model Summary
2. 4.1.2 Analysis of Variance
3. 4.1.3 Co-efficient of Regression Equation
4. 4.2 Hypotheses Assessment

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 LIST OF FIGURE

S. DESCRIPTION PAGE
NO. NO.
1. 3.5 Research Model Developed 11

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 Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Overview:

This research report is about showing the relationship between User Privacy

and the social media. We are living in era where internet is used as a major source of

communication and data. The usage of social media is growing at a rapid pace and

each day millions of users and signing in different social networks. The increasing

eyes balls on social media, there is an extreme threat of privacy rights violation. In

this research report we are trying to figure out different sources that are used to gather

information from user. Such sources include cookies files, that are tiny files that a

shored by web sites in user computers and can access our browsing history

.Datavelliance, user information is access by social networks and provided to

company to develop personal identification information. Terms and conditions is

another source used by social network, to put clauses in terms and conditions

statements, that will protect social network for any kind of sue from user side

.information disclosure, the social media to gather maximum information and forces

user to disclose personal information to proceed.

1.2 Problem Statement

“To identify the impact of social media on user privacy”

1.3 Background, Objectives and Significance of the Study

The earliest methods of communicating across great distances used written

letters delivered by hand from one person to another. The earliest form of postal

service dates back to 550 B.C., and this primitive delivery system would become

more widespread and streamlined in future centuries.

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In 1792, the telegraph was invented. This allowed messages to be delivered over a

long distance far faster than a horse and rider could carry them. Although telegraph

messages were short, they were a revolutionary way to convey news and information.

Social Media in the 20th Century

Innovation started to change quickly in the twentieth Century. After the first

super PCs were made in the 1940s, researchers and architects started to create

approaches to make systems between those PCs, and this would later prompt the

conception of the Internet. But there was protection issue to utilizing the online

networking. Complex issues frequently have profound roots and regularly create

different supposition and various translation of past practices. Such is valid for client

security. With the onset of the Revolution and the resulting change in examples,

issues that were once barely viewed as, similar to client security, soon pulled in some

worry as gigantic quantities of individuals associating in the earth. "The principle

peril to security for individuals who live in free equitable social orders in the digital

age originates from inside of the private division, not the administration." It was

additionally valid toward the start of the earlier century.

The most punctual types of the Internet, for example, CompuServe, were produced in

the 1960s. Primitive types of email were additionally created amid this time. By the

70s, organizing innovation had enhanced, and 1979's UseNet permitted clients to

impart through a virtual pamphlet. By the 1980s, home PCs were turning out to be

more normal and online networking was turning out to be more modern. Web hand-

off visits, or IRCs, were initially utilized as a part of 1988 and kept on being

prominent well into the 1990's.

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Numerous individuals progressively use social organizations, for example, Facebook,

MySpace, Twitter, Orkut, Linked in and so forth. These systems permit clients to

distribute insights about themselves and their lives furthermore join with their

companions and partners. However a percentage of the data uncovered in these

systems ought to stay private and not distributed by any stretch of the imagination.

Organizations that work interpersonal organizations are really themselves gathering a

scope of information about their clients (FB, Google, Twitter, MySpace and so forth.),

both to customize the administrations for the clients, however more pertinent as far as

security issues to offer this information to promoters.

After the creation of blogging, online networking started to blast in prevalence.

Destinations like MySpace and LinkedIn picked up unmistakable quality in the mid-

2000s, and locales like Photo bucket and Flickr encouraged online photograph

sharing. YouTube turned out in 2005, making a totally new route for individuals to

speak and impart to one another crosswise over incredible separations. By 2006,

Facebook and Twitter both got to be accessible to clients all through the world.

Today, there is a gigantic assortment of long range interpersonal communication

locales, and large portions of them can be connected to permit cross-posting. This

makes a domain where clients can achieve the greatest number of individuals without

relinquishing the closeness of individual to-individual correspondence. We can just

hypothesize about what the fate of informal communication may look in the following

decade or even quite a while from now, however it appears to be clear that it will exist

in some structure for whatever length of time that people are alive.

In spite of the fact that the Issues of online protection has been an issue for the overall

population for quite a while it has begun to become quickly because of innovation, to

be more exact if there should be an occurrence of sharing administrations advanced

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mobile phones that effectively empowers anybody to make substance and offer it with

only a single tick of a catch. Because of high entrance of cell phones with photograph

and video creation and sharing open doors, the measure of individual substance

accessible online is has been expanding quickly in the most recent years.

1.4 Outline of the Study:

This research is alienated on five chapters. Chapter 1 gives us a brief

introduction of the research where further subheadings are overview, problem

statement, background, objective, significance of the study, hypothesis, outline of

study, and definitions. chapter 2 present a literature review which has the

summarization of the previous studies by different authors which is related to this

research. Chapter 3 describes the Research Methods, which includes methods of data

collection, sampling technique, sample size, Instrument of Data Collection, Validity

and Reliability test, research model development and statistical technique. Chapter 4

has findings of the research which is explained by interpretations of result and

assessment of hypothesis. The final chapter 5 consists of discussion, conclusion,

policy implication, and the possibilities of future research in this field.

1.5 Definitions

1.5.1 User Privacy:

User privacy is the term which means privacy of users, a person or user is worried

about his/her confidential information which he doesn’t want to get leaked. And in

order to protect themselves, they have to follow precaution steps to hide their

confidential or personal information. User Privacy means that user don’t want to get

their personal or confidential information revealed to others or getting monitored on

their secret information on their computer.

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1.5.2 Cookies Files:

Cookies file are small files stored in your PC, these cookies files contain user

information like video game save data, filled forms etc. these cookies are used by

websites later.

1.5.3 Datavelliance:

Datavelliance means observation of a person’s activities through other websites when

you visit them.

1.5.4 Terms and Conditions:

Terms and condition are formalities which has to be commanded and supervised

according to the law and regulation to be followed prescribed by site.

1.5.5 Information Disclosure:

Information Disclosure means revealing information to others, and it can cause attack

on valuable information of users.

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 Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 What is Privacy?

Privacy is the concept expressing the freedom to thinking, liberty to have

complete control upon oneself, individual autonomy upon the information about

oneself, not been followed the others, loneliness at one’s home, individual reputation

and respect has been secured and free from investigation(Solove, 2002). Many

scholars has debated over the concept of individual privacy and came to conclusion

that privacy is essential for individual significance and emotional stability, for

personal rectitude, self-execution, self-determination, development of mutual

understanding and self-independence and sovereignty (DeCew, 2006).

2.2 User Privacy and Social Media

2.2.1 User Privacy

With the begin of the internet age, a large number of user were attracted to

online social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, MySpace and LinkedIn etc.

Users around the world signed up on such social networks to share personal

information and to discover other individuals with similar interests like their (Zhou,

2011). According to recent surveys, social media is the largest source of information

and social media information is keep on increasing day by day on a repaid speed(Ma,

Meng & Wang, 2012). Millions of social network users publish information and data

online and ever disclose personal information just to get some discount on online

stuffs. Why are people doing so, what about their privacy? We have different

concepts regarding user privacy, researcher have presented different theories related

to user privacy (Spector, 2003). According to Tavani (1999) controlling the privacy

hazards is difficult in the era where information is easy available and there are little

protection available to overcome privacy interference.

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Due to advancement of technologies and development of smart devices, there is

emergence of issues that violates the privacy rights and governments and other

organizations has started to develop laws and practices to address this arising

issues(Cooper, 1997). According to researchers the user information is accessed in

two ways, firstly the user information is provided access to their friends, family or

peers and secondly the information is given access to third parties for the purpose of

collection of personal identification information (Livingstone, Olafsson & Staksrud,

2011; Clarke, 1988; Fuchs, 2011; Gandy, 2003; Solove, 2001)

Users of social networks share personal pictures of their friends and upon some web

sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. family without been concerned about

privacy, but they will get little privacy concerned to share information on a unknown

websites. People have different level of standards regarding their privacy and their

privacy concerns are different for different situations (Hsu, 2006).

The user privacy concepts that separates private and public information is vague and

unclear to common population online .the smart devices have sensors functions that

records the data individual generates, like places they went, the shops they stopped at

, the web sites they visited regularly, user used software etc. (Zimmer, 2010;

Nissenbaum, 2010).The information disclosed by the users is difficult to control

because the social media is world- wide phenomenon and the laws developed to

protect privacy are often in state of conflicts due to multi-national borders. Many

studies have shown that online user are majority times unaware of this phenomenon

that their personal information is been used and their privacy rights are been violated.

As the usage of internet is rapidly growing and becoming the most depended source

of information gathering and communication, privacy violation is becoming more

vulnerable. They main reason after such privacy violation is the lack of laws from

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governments to protect user information to be exploited for the cybercrimes (Kruck,

Gottovi, Moghadami, Broom, &Forcht, 2002).

2.2.2 Social Media

Social media is an innovation encouraged dialog among people or gatherings, for

example, web journals/ micro blogs, content sharing, wikis, social media, forums,

social gaming and social bookmarking (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014). Social media

(Web 2.0) is a platform which facility online applications that provide its user with

experience, information and empower them to participate in different business and

social processes. Social media applications provide its user to create networks that

facilitate flow of information and data, sharing of knowledge and generating contents

(Tsimonis.etal, 2014).

Now the social media is completely the internet activity it considered as primary

source of human interaction, news and their opinions. Lamdan discus that if face book

would be a country and users were the citizen, it would be third popular country of the

world on the other side of only India and china (lamdon 2015).due the insufficient

protection of the social media privacy the user keep out of sight all the information,

even they clear the history from browse (lamdan etal). Social media transformation

quickly .it’s now applicable knowledge but difficult to trust on new technologies

(Espinosa 2014).

Held a library survey that effectiveness of the social media presence so its mostly

in two form face book and instragram plus website so respondents are satisfied and

easy to access of anything Hillary webb & ken Laing (2015).

Basically there are two defined problem linked with conceptualize with social media.

1)the extensive ranging of the social media have been, in a developing process ,

impulsive ,pay no attention , and re-conceptualize day by day in different countries

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and change level of public familiarity; 2)soial media have capable forms and well

being of communication process Obar, Zube & Lampe(2012). Dreyer and Ziebarth

(2014) he suggested that Since 1960s transparency requirement is common term

famous among legislators.

Effect of social media may be positive and negative because of the lack of safety of

user’s privacy. Information through website and add of the users he fell to insecure in

throughout the process. They get irritate to the emails and add gain and again Ithel

Jones and A. D. Pellegrini(1996). Most of the people want to join social media in any

way either it look acquiring and disputing Manovich(2009).

In the united state there are two most known social networking websites works

together each have billion of users registered. Tan and Hsu(2012)

In article about generation Y (age 1981-1999) are considered highly socio economical

status in developing countries just because of their change in culture and

technological infrastructure Solnet (2013)

Another research Social networking has good effect in college and school levels

Felix (2013).some eduation institution are using this media to reach out their

learners. McKeown(2013).indivitual donot are about privacy also the proess which

lead to privacy settle by behavioral and experimental economist Shishkin(2014)

2.3 Cookies files

Ali Altaf

Many of the authors and writers are of the opinion that one’s privacy keep a

high weightage for him or her. Leakage of privacy put a big impact on the behavior of

general human being (Lior Jacob Strahilevitz) Cookies are very small data structures

that are used by browser to store in our computer and it gives information to the

website owner (Darren Charters, 2015) those cookies are stored in our PC’s which

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contains our activities, even our login username and password. These info inside

cookies can only be accessed by website who created that cookie on our computer.

But the main problem is our data is no more personal and can be used by advertising

or research companies that’s why you are warned and asked by Google search engine

that do you trust this website? Because google might have got complaints about

notorious activity of that websites. If you check your e-mail address even if it’s newly

created you will notice that e-mail that comes in your Inbox or Junk are mostly from

those e-mail address that you don’t know and have no idea about it. This happens

because when you enter your personal information and e-mail address, it may be

possible that the particular site doesn’t keep your confidential information to

themselves. This has been done many times by sites to get data for their research to

know information about buying and purchasing behavior, and this is all done with the

help of cookies which can track information in your computer, even if this data file is

very small but it has potential to control your PC data through your browser. Data is

being gathered by cookies through different ways such as Flash Cookies (also known

as Local Shared Objects, Etag, userData, Html5 and Html5 web storage (Ayenson,

M., Wambach, D.J., Soltani, A., Good, N., & Hoofnagle, C.J. 2011). Sometime we

face situation in which we have to provide information on certain pro forma and

accordingly we fill the forms and give our personal information by filling the form

and formats. We do know that these type of information is stored in the cookies and

can be hazardous. Adobe Flash did not have option of deleting its cookies before 2006

September which could pose threat to user’s privacy. Also the one of the most

important feature of cookies is that it has to remove itself when date of expiry comes,

but unfortunately until now Flash still do not have ability to set expiry date for flash

cookies. (Jo Pierson Rob Heyman, 2011) However Cookies are actually not that much

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harmful the main purpose as explained before is that it is a very small text type file

which is stored in your computer and it’s not necessary that it always violates user’s

privacy or any law. For instance, when you buy something from Online Shopping

Centre such as Amazon or homeshopping.pk, the product that you selected is placed

in shopping carts and this information of placing your order in shopping cart is stored

in cookies, Shopping websites usually use form to collect information about their

customer and provide services according to their requirement of customers thus they

store cookies in Consumer’s Computer which stores all consumer’s requirement

(Chapman and Dhillon, 2002) However, it’s been observed that people are very

concerned about usage of cookies by websites as some of most famous Social

Networking websites have given permission to use their user’s profile information to

be used for target marketing purpose purposes (Lavin 2006; Raghu, Rao, and

Whinston 2001). According to Anton, He, and Baumer, Chapman and Dhillon &

Hemphill. Companies like Comcast and Double Click are always been criticized for

examining users data for their marketing purpose, they engaged in tracking all users’

data and also without permission of users they tracked them (Chapman and Dhillon,

2002). It’s been believed when a research and investigation on websites was done by

FTC that one of the most hectic country i.e. USA has permitted 78% of its websites to

do cookie monitoring by third party websites (Martin, Wu, & Alsaid, 2003), As the

things evolves and we see many advancement in things like we have seen from

PlayStation 1 graphics to PlayStation 4 graphics, from Pentium 1 to Core i7, from the

unmovable telephone to extremely slim and portable mobile phones. We have seen

technological advancement throughout our life and like these advancement cookies

has also taken new forms although their goals are same i.e. to save information in

little file, such new form of cookies are “clear gifs”, these clear gifs are 1x1 pixels in

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size which means that it’s concealed, unseen and unnoticeable to the users of websites

especially users of social media sites (Hoofnagle 2005; Martin,Wu, and Alsaid 2003).

Not only that, Social media sites like Yahoo has also been seen using their customer’s

data monitoring and revealing their information up to third party websites. The main

disadvantage of cookies use is that there is lack of consumer understanding relating to

cookies. For instance, when users founds that cookies can track you information, they

get afraid of invasion of their privacy. They are scared of that how cookies work and

they also have no idea that how they can deal with cookies placed by websites they

have visited. Another disadvantage is that cookies can be used for research purpose

without consent of the users of that websites (Anthony D. Miyazaki, 2008; Ha et al.

2006; Hoofnagle 2005). a number of users apprehend that sharing of information can

cause threat to user’s privacy and can also harm their computers. Cookies do not have

any personal information in them, but when a user puts all information in website, this

information is transferred to cookies and stored there. But problem this information

can be used for tracking users. (Weihong PengJennifer Cisna, 2000) A user can avoid

cookies tracing by removing them every week or month, because having cookies on

your pc for long time can make your personal information vulnerable.

2.4 Dataveillance,

2.5 Terms & Conditions

Zahida Brohi

Harrzog (2010) suggested that Individuals are not forming contractual

relationships when they watch television, listen radio channels, or purchase

newspapers. But if someone is using social media for online reading, listening or

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viewing something, are required to enter into “term and conditions” contract. Area of

intellectual Property rights and privacy can be affected because of these ubiquitous

agreements. These agreements are generally unfavorable for user. The restricted terms

often restrict user’s behavior and their ability to do any changes in the website.

At the point when viewers turn on the TV, they are not legitimately bound to parley,

as opposed to prosecute in court, any debate they may have with the system. The

basic demonstration of turning on the radio does not preclude audience members from

singing to a companion the tunes they listened. By acquiring a daily paper, a per user

is not consenting to let the distributer offer individual data. Yet as media join

digitally, pursuers, viewers and audience members are required to go into contracts.

Online contracts, normally as "terms of utilization," go with basically every Web

website, site or informal community webpage on the Internet. The understandings

commonly include commitments in regards to how the gatherings will settle question,

authorizing of a client's copyrighted work, confinements on utilization of the Web

website and of the webpage's substance, constraints on a Web webpage's obligation,

and warnings in regards to how the client's close to home data can be utilized

(Hartzog, 2010).

In these days, many of companies have decided to go online, however, some of them

are giving any serious regard to the legal implications of their online presence.in

generally if a company decide to have Terms and Conditions on their website in the

first place, the company decide to add those Terms and Conditions to the site as part

of the general layout of the website, but not as a Legal protection for its activities.

Now the question is that: Are these Terms and Conditions enforceable? If we say in

other words would the company be bound by the Terms and Conditions posted on a

web page by simply clicking on the button “I Accept", or "I Agree" (Qudah , 2003).

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According to Barua, Anitesh, Pinnell, Shutter and whinston (1999) privacy as a key

issue that Internet marketers need to recognize and address. Consumer privacy in

general has been identified as a "significant marketing issue of the 90's.

The Internet' potential challenges marketers to overcome a variety of concerns,

primarily in respect to credit card security and consumer privacy. The interactive

nature of the Internet, which allows for two-way exchange of information between

marketer and consumer that enhances commercial opportunities.

In the Internet age, where most data is looked for not in paper volumes but rather

through electronic means, curators must extend their conventional security tenets to

online networking stages. Scholarly flexibility, the privilege of people to look for and

get data, depends on security to ensure data seekers (Lamdan, 2015).As Edwards

(1993) notes, individuals are regularly reluctant to talk about their protection concerns

with others. To be sure, an upgraded nonresponse rate seems, by all accounts, to be

characteristic to leading examination about touchy points.

Shaheen and Hoy (2000) find that the FTC's center standards address a significant

number of online purchasers' protection concerns. Then again, two components not

straightforwardly consolidated in the five standards, the connections in the middle of

substances and online clients and the trading of information or appropriate

compensation may impact shoppers' protection concerns.

2.6 Information Disclosure

Essa Khan
In the modern world Organizations and individuals are dependent on the different

social networking sites to sharing their information and communicate with rest of the

world.

The basic purpose of this research paper is to highlight the privacy and information

disclosure problems which arise through the use of social media. Because of the

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different social networking sites people are disclosing their personal information by

their own in different forms.

Such type of actions raise questions about the privacy of the people. Technological

development is also a concern in information disclosure, like the emergence of

location tracers on social media are also an example of information disclosure

(Clarke, 2001).

According to the Current information systems research there are different

explanations about the information disclosure like Belanger and Crossler (2011)

interpreted that information security and information privacy are interconnected with

each other. Privacy and information disclosure are always dependent on some factors

like on the online context, people and some other factors, in the social media.

(Nguyen, 2012).Some of the researchers argued that in the modern era of technology

it is difficult to handle the information, it is now going out of the control of

individuals and it is shifting in the hands of organizations (Conger, 2013). While other

researchers have claimed that there should be some extended and secondary control

and check on the information protection (Belanger.et al, 2011).

On the other hand online advertisers are using the social networking sites for the

advertisement but the social site users widely criticize it because of their privacy.

Online service providers are not providing the users free service but in return they are

tracking users and sharing their information to the third parties, without the consent of

users. That’s why Kuehn ( 2013) has blamed the internet service providers as they are

great threat to the users privacy, social network users were not aware of these security

breaches and information disclosure for a long time but when they saw different posts

and other activities on their social network feeds, they started protesting and

complaining against these information disclosures. After that multi-dimensional

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concept emerged which included the information providers, information collectors or

illegal entities, after that they introduced different degrees of management and control

upon personal information specially for the modern technology.(Dhillon , 2013).

Some researchers argue that when more data is demanded from the individuals, the

individuals become more fearful about their data and their trust level decreases

(Boulding, 2005).

Consumers are more concerned about the information which is being collected by the

organizations and they lack control over the information and how the organization

will protect their data from errors and unauthorized users (Smith, Milberg, &Burke,

1996). These type of privacy concerns leads consumers to design information sharing

rationally by using different techniques of protecting information and privacy (Lwin,

Wirtz, &Williams,2007).

Benson, Saridakis and Tennakoon (2015) in a comparative analysis on social

networking sites found that there are many researchers who believe that so much trust

on online networks has increased the self-disclosure. It is discovered on the basis of

their researches that a threat to a person’s social identity is basically a threat to his

informational privacy.(Hugl, 2011).

Hugl (2011) studied the behavior of students regarding the cautions for information

disclosure at Carnegie Mellon University he used famous social networking sites and

to observe the different kind of behaviors from various dimensions of the privacy.

Moreover they used a sample of 4540 Facebook id’s and concluded that only a few no

of users change the default setting of privacy on their feeds to protect their personal

data.

Many times consumers know that information about them is being collected by the

social site which they are using like, a site may asks that to access this site provide the

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following information and then you can continue, many times user accept the terms of

that site and provide them the information at that time users is not worried about the

privacy policy (Sheehan & Hoy, 2000).

Sometimes users become aware that their information has been collected, only when

they receive some kind of marketing ads or communication from any other site that

has collected information about them. At that time users realize that a third party has

somehow assembled their information and the user feels that now he has lost his

control over the information and he does not want the marketers to sell their

information (Sheehan et al, 2000). Recently the Information security standards have

been defined and various international and national, rules exists which provide

guidelines, encourage best practices and information privacy is treated through legal

rules but still it is not implemented to that extent (Lambrinoudakis, 2013).

Chapter 3: Research Methods

3.1 Method of Data Collection

The method of data collection is primary. A sample of 100 people was taken

by using the sampling method of Convenience Sampling from IQRA University

students. Respondent’s response through questionnaire, sample is taken from the

population which is at convenience or in other words which is close at hand and it is a

form of non-probability sampling method, time constraint and a study conducted by

group members.

3.2 Sampling Technique

Technique used by researcher is “Convenience Sampling” because it

facilitated researchers to gather data with availability of respondents in IQRA

UNIVERSITY.

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3.3 Sample Size

The sample size for the research consists of 100 respondents. Respondents’ are

from Iqra University.

3.4 Instrument of Data Collection

The tool applied for data collection is questionnaire.

3.5 Research Model Developed

Self-developed model

Independent Variable

Cookies -ive
Dependent Variable
-ive
Dataveillance
User’s Privacy
+ive
Terms and
Conditions
-ive

Information
Disclosure

3.6 Statistical Technique

The technique which researcher exercised to identify effect of independent

variables (Cookies Files, Dataveillance, Terms and Conditions, Information

Disclosure) on Dependent variable (User’s Privacy) “descriptive statistics” which

consist of frequencies and averages. Through which, we obtain results and come up to

the conclusion.

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 Chapter 4: Results

This chapter covers the research findings and interpretation of the results for

the sample size of 100 observations, taken to analyze the privacy concern of user’s

regarding to Social Media. For this purpose we used privacy concern as independent

variable, user’s privacy as dependent variable to see user’s privacy in Cookies Files,

Dataveillance, Terms and Conditions, Information Disclosure as sub independent

variables. Regression test have been used as statistical techniques to examine that

whether there is positive or negative impact on user’s privacy, spss software is used

for this study.

4.1 Findings and interpretation of the results

In order to examine the relationship between dependent variable and

independent variable regression analysis was used. The result of regressions analysis

is mentioned in following tables.

Regression Model Summary:

Table: 1

Model Summary

Std. Error of the

Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Estimate

1 .514a .264 .233 .67085

a. Predictors: (Constant), Information_Discolusre, Dataveillance, Terms_Conditions, Cookies_File

Table 1 shows relationship between dependent variable and independent variable. The
value of R Square lies between the range of 0.2 to 0.4 which shows that dependent
variable and independent variable have weak relationship.

Coefficient of determination of R^2:

This model summary shows that 51.4% of variance cause by independent variable and
48.6 % remaining variation is explained by unknown variable that were not a part of
study.

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Analysis of variance: (ANOVA)
Table:2
ANOVAb

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

1 Regression 15.312 4 3.828 8.506 .000a

Residual 42.754 95 .450

Total 58.066 99

a. Predictors: (Constant), Information_Discolusre, Datavelliance, Terms_Conditions, Cookies_File

b. Dependent Variable: User_Privacy

Table: 2 shows that the significance value is .000 which is less than .05 its mean that
dependent variable is accepted.

Coefficient of regression equation:

Table: 3

Coefficientsa

Unstandardized Standardized
Coefficients Coefficients

Model B Std. Error Beta t Sig.

1 (Constant) 2.676 .642 4.171 .000

Cookies_File -.132 .134 -.089 -.987 .326

Dataveillance .169 .113 .132 1.502 .136

Terms_Conditions -.260 .102 -.225 -2.542 .013

Information_Discolusre .400 .084 .436 4.793 .000

a. Dependent Variable: User_Privacy

Table 3 shows the coefficient regression equation for variables with significance
level. In this table the significance value of Terms and conditions variable is .013 and
information disclosure is .000 is less than .005 which mean this research hypothesis is
accepted. Cookies files variable is .326 and Dataveillance variable is .136, hence
rejected because their is greater than .005.

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Hypotheses Assessment Summary:
Table 4

S# Hypotheses Test Specifiable Empirical

Finding
B T SIG
H1 Social media cookies files
1. -.132 -.987 .326 Rejected
has negative relationship with
User’s privacy
H2: Social media Dataveillance
2. .169 Rejected
has negative relationship with
1.502 .136
User’s privacy
H3: Social media terms and
3. conditions policies has positive -.260 Accepted
relationship with User’s privacy -2.542 .013
H4: Level of information .400
4. disclosure on social networks 4.793 .000 Accepted
has negative relationship with
User’s privacy

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Chapter 5: Discussions, Conclusion, Policy Implications and

Future Research

5.1 Discussions

The research was based on user’s privacy concern regarding social media.

Research comes up to a decision that there is negative impact of three variables

(Cookies Files, Information Disclosure and Datavelliance) on user’s privacy and

positive impact of Terms and Conditions on dependent variable (User’s Privacy).

According to the research findings users privacy is positively affected by the

cookies files on social media which results in disclosure of our information, the

information of a user can be disclosed by Datavelliance (authorities who handle the

users information).it is very rare that a social network user reads the terms and

conditions of any app or using a new site.

5.2 Conclusion

The hypotheses were clarified by asking different relevant questions regarding

the pre-determined hypothesis and results were processed using SPSS software by

using frequency distribution tables based on the results of the questionnaire and its

analysis various conclusions derived and recommendations were given that the

impact of social media on user’s privacy at IQRA University . Data was collected

from a sample of 100 respondents which summarizes the data. As a result, findings

generated that cookies files, Datavelliance and terms and conditions had positive

relationship with the user privacy and Information Disclosure had negative

relationship with user privacy.

So the data collected from respondents shows that cookies files Datavelliance

terms and conditions have absolute impact on user privacy. People are not affected by

2
cookies file by means of unwanted ads on social media and datavelliance does not

disclose their information instead secured ethically, similarly terms and condition

have favorable impact on people.

In short, according to respondent cookies files, dataveillance and terms and

condition don’t harm them but information disclosure impact on them in respect of

sharing information by ordering items and provide detail information on secured

website also disclose their information.

5.3 Policy Implications

Research concluded that there is positive relationship between three variables

Cookies Files, terms and conditions and Datavelliance and user privacy, but there is a

negative relationship of information disclosure and user privacy.to deal with such user

privacy hazards, government should establish laws and regulation that protect user

personal information. Policies should be develop to limit the cybercrimes .the social

network should develop policies to restrict information misuse and should provide

secure web protocol to its user.

5.4. Future Research

2
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