Privacy and Security—Limits of Personal Information to Minimize Loss of Privacy

Abstract

The current information age enabled the direct access to personal information that rapidly invades private space. With the advent of new information technology’s equipment and innovations the time and distance limitations of communication got minimized that leads to more interaction among IT users. Thus with the expansion of information society the privacy violation becomes prominent as well as privacy dilemma got increased. IT users think that personal information is used for other purposes rather than security. The things are getting worse when the organization outsources data processing to other suppliers and sometime share information with third parties. All these steps are rapidly increasing users’ attention towards their personal information. The aim of this research is to investigate the concerns of IT users about their personal information and to find out that how much personal information users would like to provide to government, secured organizations, private organizations’ websites and social media. Data has been collected through a questionnaire from the students of Department of Computer and System Sciences (DSV), Stockholm University, Sweden and Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm Sweden. The findings of the research study show that all the participants had deep knowledge about privacy. They were highly concerned about sharing their personal information with third parties. More importantly, respondents refused to provide complete personal information to nonprofit organizations and social media. On the other hand, the survey result reflects that people provide their complete personal information to organizations such as Swedish Migrationsverket, Skatteverket, and to DSV, KTH and Swedish banks. The IT users believed that these systems are quiet secure for their personal information and they will not use their information for other purposes.