Privacy Threats and Their Impact on the Core Values

Abstract

In Chapter 4 we discussed many ways online social networks and e-commerce support the realisation of the core values which guide our normative approach, introduced in Chapter 2. However, the benefits of OSNs and e-commerce are also accompanied by threats. In this chapter we investigate potential privacy violations in OSNs and the consequences they might have for the core values. We start by analysing OSNs. First we present central conditions whose fulfilment provides privacy protection in OSNs. In order to evaluate the threats to privacy in OSNs we analyse when and how these conditions may be violated. This is the purpose of the second section in this chapter. In the third section, we explain how a violation of the central conditions and thus a loss of privacy in the context of OSNs can negatively impact our core values: free self-determination, democratic participation, and economic well-being. We then show that the analysis of OSNs to a large extent also applies to e-commerce and mention additional aspects that are relevant for e-commerce. We will conclude that the privacy conditions need to be fulfilled as far as possible in order to safeguard our core values.