Why do consumers disclose sensitive
information to shady-looking websites?
Many consumers need help
recognizing when their privacy is compromised, according to a new study
in the Journal of Consumer Research.
"How can we make sense of the
contradictory attitudes that individuals display toward privacy—from the
seemingly reckless willingness of some to post personal and even
incriminating information on social network sites, to the concern people
express over the range of information being collected about them and the
way it's being used?" write authors Leslie K. John, Alessandro Acquisti,
and George Loewenstein (all Carnegie Mellon University).
The researchers found that cues
give rise to different levels of disclosure across situations. For
example, in their first experiment, visitors to the New York Times
website were asked either directly or indirectly whether they had
cheated on their taxes. Twenty-one percent admitted to cheating when
they were asked indirectly, versus 12.9 percent who were asked directly.
In subsequent experiments,
participants were asked whether they had engaged in a series of
different behaviors. Some participants answered a survey on a website
that was intentionally made to look unprofessional, with a header that
asked "How BAD Are U???" in a red font next to a cartoon devil logo.
Others answered the same survey on a website that billed it as "Carnegie
Mellon University Executive Council Survey on Ethical Behaviors" next to
the university crest. "People were more willing to divulge sensitive
information when the survey was administered on an
unprofessional-looking website," the authors write.
The authors found that they
could cue participants to become more aware of privacy issues. People
who completed a photo-identification task that asked them to identify
phishing emails (designed to lure recipients into revealing information
such as passwords) were less likely to disclose sensitive information in
the next experiment.
"People seem naturally
comfortable disclosing personal information on unprofessional
websites—which are arguably more likely to misuse it," the authors
write. "The present research raises issues about people's ability to
navigate these complexities in a self-interested fashion."
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