heal.abstract
Online Privacy is a progressively significant matter. However, certain users do not appear to be worried about securing their own personally attributable information when they are online, while others seem to be extremely conscious when asked to provide even the most common data. During the last several years, legislation has been established to aid in managing the collection and exploitation of personal information; yet, a significant portion of the population is still very concerned about the unauthorized release or exploitation of their personal data. The problem is of great interest to businesses with online e-commerce sites, to companies with other online presence, and last but not least to the academic and research communities.
The present study’s primary objective is to try to determine whether gender, combined with the educational background of the Internet users, have an effect on the way online privacy is perceived and practiced. The study was conducted within the services of social networking, e-commerce, and online banking.
An online questionnaire was distributed through e-mail and the social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+). Our primary hypothesis is that an interrelationship may exist among a user’s gender, educational background, and the way an online user perceives and acts regarding online privacy. An analysis of a representative sample of Greek Internet users (n=1, 219), revealed that there is an effect by Gender on the online users’ awareness regarding online privacy, as well as on the way they act upon it. Furthermore, we found that a correlation exists as well in terms of the Educational Background of the users and the issue of Online Privacy. The final finding was that these two factors combined are not able to predict the way users handle Online Privacy.
en