PrePrint: Can Privacy Policies be Traced to Privacy Controls on Social Networking Sites? : A Qualitative Study

PrePrint: Can Privacy Policies be Traced to Privacy Controls on Social Networking Sites? : A Qualitative Study: Social networking sites have become increasingly popular over recent years. However, there is a wide-spread level of dissatisfaction and lack of trust from users towards social network providers due to privacy concerns. This article attempts to uncover whether these feelings are justified by examining the degree of traceability between privacy policies and the privacy controls of social networking sites. Our aim was to determine whether the privacy controls actually reflect the contents of the privacy policies. We studied sixteen prominent social networking sites and discovered that there is a significant disconnect between privacy policies and privacy controls.

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