Title: Moving from opt-out to opt-in? Online information disclosure and privacy policies in an era of personalisation

Authors: Chris Vleugels, Griet Verhenneman, Stijn Bannier

Addresses: IBBT-SMIT, VUB, Studies on Media Information and Telecommunication, Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 9 B-1050 Brussels, Belgium. ' IBBT-ICRI, KUL, Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT, Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Sint-Michielsstraat 6 B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. ' Collaborative Creativity Group, UNU-MERIT, United Nations University – Maastricht University, Keizer Karelplein 19 6211 TC Maastricht, The Netherlands

Abstract: The advent of social networks has led to new questions in the area of privacy. Facebook continuously works on its privacy control panel to help simplify its notoriously confusing privacy options. However, organisations have criticised Facebook|s approach to privacy, namely providing its members with opt-out choices. Why is Facebook forcing members to deny permission after sharing personal information with third parties, rather than asking explicit consent in advance? We examine this question from an integrated social scientific and legal approach by elaborating Facebook|s privacy policy and by using the results from the research project |Cultural Profile and Information Database| (CUPID).

Keywords: privacy policy; privacy protection; opt-in; opt-out; personalisation; recommendations; machine-generated content; cultural participation; public sphere; Facebook; CUPID; cultural profile; social networks; online information disclosure; personal information.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEG.2011.041713

International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2011 Vol.4 No.1/2, pp.156 - 171

Published online: 30 Jul 2011 *

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