Poster: Privacy Aspects of Health Related Information Sharing in Online Social Networks

Online social networks (OSNs) have formed virtual social networks where people meet and share information. Among all shared information, health related information (HRI) has received considerable attention from researchers and individual users. Although considered beneficial, sharing HRI, which is personal in nature, comes with its privacy drawback. Privacy is a process of boundary regulation that is related to the individual and her perception of the surrounding environment [1]. As a result, the subjective privacy risk perceptions associated with sharing HRI in OSN have driven people to adopt different behaviours, both in terms of HRI sharing and risks mitigation. In this study, we conducted an online survey to explore users’ behaviours in terms of sharing HRI on OSNs. We examined factors that affected users’ perceived privacy risks along with their risk-mitigating behaviours. We found that the majority of users shared some HRI through their OSN account(s) (95.8% of 166 participants), while considering the shared HRI “type” and its “recipient” to be more important in forming their perceived privacy risk and possible behavioural responses.