Sarah Spiekermann

Online Social Networks: Why We Disclose

On online social networks such as Facebook, massive self-disclosure by users has attracted the attention of industry players and policymakers worldwide. Despite the impressive scope of this phenomenon, very little is understood about what motivates users to disclose personal information. Integrating focus group results into a theoretical privacy calculus framework, we develop and empirically test a Structural Equation Model of self-disclosure with 259 subjects. We find that users are primarily motivated to disclose information because of the convenience of maintaining and developing relationships and platform enjoyment. Countervailing these benefits, privacy risks represent a critical barrier to information disclosure. However, users’ perception of risk can be mitigated by their trust in the network provider and availability of control options. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for network providers.

RFID and the perception of control: the consumer's view

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

Motivating Human–Agent Interaction: Transferring Insights from Behavioral Marketing to Interface Design

The understanding of consumer interaction with online EC Websites is one of the big current challenges for online marketers. The present paper investigates what drives and impedes Net customers to interact with a marketers websites and, more specifically, with decision support interface systems (DSISs) employed in these sites to assist users when shopping or searching for high-involvement consumer goods. DSIS are considered as a predecessor or partially already integrator of more elaborated agent systems that may be used in future EC environments. It is shown that the design of todays DSISs is sub-optimal for both marketers and consumers, because it fails to motivate user interaction. One reason for this might be that little effort has been made to transfer the insights from consumer behavior to the design of EC user interfaces. The current paper aims to address this gap by proposing a number of new DSIS design principles, all of which are based on insights from traditional marketing search- and perceived risk theory. The main contribution of this paper is that it proposes a design approach for EC Websites that intuitively “makes the user model available to the user” [Shneiderman and Maes, 36].

General aspects of location-based services

This chapter focuses on the market of location-based services and its applications, explores the use of local information, and the challenges that are being confronted. Location services can be defined as services that integrate a mobile devices location or position with other information so as to provide added value to a user. Location services have a long tradition. Since the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense has been operating the global positioning system (GPS), a satellite infrastructure serving the positioning of people and objects. Initially, GPS was conceived for military purposes, but the U.S. government decided to make the systems positioning data freely available to other industries worldwide. Since then, many industries have taken up the opportunity to access position data through GPS and now use it to enhance their products and services. For example, lately, the automotive industry has been integrating navigation systems into cars. .

The challenges of privacy by design

Heralded by regulators, Privacy by Design holds the promise to solve the digital worlds privacy problems. But there are immense challenges, including management commitment and step-by-step methods to integrate privacy into systems.

Critical RFID Privacy-Enhancing Technologies

RFID technology can help automatically and remotely identify objects, which raises many security concerns. The authors review and categorize several RFID security and privacy solutions, and conclude that the most promising and low-cost approach currently attracts little academic attention.

Security Analysis of the Object Name Service

The EPCglobal network is designed to function as a global information retrieval network for objects carrying RFID tags with an Electronic Product Code (EPC). To locate corresponding information sources a so-called Object Name Service (ONS) is used. We take a look at privacy and security implications of ONS deployment and evaluate possible mitigation strategies.

A Systematic Methodology for Privacy Impact Assessments: A Design Science Approach

For companies that develop and operate IT applications that process the personal data of customers and employees, a major problem is protecting these data and preventing privacy breaches. Failure to adequately address this problem can result in considerable damage to the company’s reputation and finances, as well as negative effects for customers or employees (data subjects). To address this problem, we propose a methodology that systematically considers privacy issues by using a step-by-step privacy impact assessment (PIA). Existing PIA approaches cannot be applied easily because they are improperly structured or imprecise and lengthy. We argue that companies that employ our PIA can achieve ‘privacy-by-design’, which is widely heralded by data protection authorities. In fact, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) ratified the approach we present in this article for the technical field of RFID and published it as a guideline in November 2011. The contribution of the artefacts we created is twofold: First, we provide a formal problem representation structure for the analysis of privacy requirements. Second, we reduce the complexity of the privacy regulation landscape for practitioners who need to make privacy management decisions for their IT applications.

Managing RFID projects in organizations

The theme of the paper is to find the tasks faced by organizations in the accomplishment of RFID projects as well as how assessment of RFID value can be made. Explicitly, papers will cover three key segments, that is, Applications, Disputes and Assessment. The first segment ‘Applications’ elucidates the various applications that RFID can be positioned; the second segment ‘Disputes’ is apprehensive with the several disputes that affect the assumption and use of RFID; and the final segment

The inflation of academic intellectual capital: the case for design science research in Europe

Editor-in-ChiefEuropean Journal of Information Systemsadvance online publication,7 December 2010; doi:10.1057/ejis.2010.57In this issue, EJIS is publishing ‘Memorandum on Design OrientedInformation Systems Research’, an opinion that has engendered muchdebate in the German-speaking Information Systems (IS) community.Already published in German, we present an English translation. Followingthe Memorandum is ‘A Response to the Design-oriented InformationSystems Research Memorandum’ by Richard Baskerville, Kalle Lyytinen, V.Sambamurthy, and Detmar Straub. To a certain degree, these opinionpapers are part of a wider and continuing discourse about the evolvingmores in the assessment of academic research. This discourse hasmaterialized in a number of EJIS articles, for example, relating to Britain(Paul, 2008), Finland (Iivari, 2008), and Europe in general (Lyytinen et al.,2007).There are many issues; but a central theme in this discourse has beenthe value and scientific quality associated with the various artifacts thatrepresent IS research outcomes. Such artifacts not only include reportssuch as books, journal articles, and conference presentations, but becauseof the underlying technology they may also include operational computerprograms, machinery, and practices (Committee on Academic Careersfor Experimental Computer Scientists, 1994). The precedence in thevalue attached to these artifacts is evolving and is relative to differentinstitutions, academic traditions and cultures. In some cases, journalarticles are particularly privileged, and this privilege may even exclusivelyvalue only ‘top’ journal articles. In this editorial, our central concern froma perspective of editors of EJIS is this focus on the high value often attachedto our journal review and acceptance decisions. The basis of suchvaluations is not only ours, but also the precedence attached by others.These valuations are often situated within specific institutions or scholarlycultures. For example, in the scholarship of discovery (Boyer, 1996),articles in the scientific literature are often rightfully favored. In thescholarship of teaching, textbooks are rightfully valued (which does notlessen the value of scientific papers).A part of these issues therefore lies with various institutional or culturalvaluations of scholarly artifacts. Such valuations may err by levelingexpectations for research journal publications from scholars whoseduties do not actually involve scientific research. Research journal qualitymanagement has worked quite well to advance the community’s research-oriented knowledge via competitive peer reviews. These processes are notto blame for the rejection of artifacts that lack a serious researchcontribution.Further, a part of these issues is the evolution within some evaluationbodies toward the assignment of a singular importance of top journalplacements, and associated risks of a too rigid system in terms ofresearchers’ learning and personal development, complementarities ofpublications and diversity of outputs for overall richer knowledge andtools creation (Loos et al., 2010). Such evaluations will leave other artifacts