akar, khadije, kiani, Mohammad Reza and sangari, Mahmoo Security and privacy of social network users: investigation of individual factors. Human Information Interaction, 2024, vol. 11, n. 2, pp. 123-143. [Journal article (Paginated)]
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English abstract
Introduction Online social networks are new and innovative media that have made changes in the social, cultural, economic and political structures of societies. These networks have not only changed the rules and regulations governing communication and interaction between humans, but also our thinking and attitude towards ourselves, others and the world. With the rapid development of technology, online social networks have become very popular in the current decade. With the development of virtual space and the use of social networks, privacy is at risk more than ever, and in the meantime, social networks have a privileged status in terms of obtaining, collecting and using personal information. There are several security and privacy issues related to shared user information, especially when a user uploads personal content such as photos, videos, and audio files. Methods and Materoal This descriptive survey used a Researcher-made questionnaire on a sample of students of University of Birjand (375 participants). For questionnaire’s validity, the experts’ opinions was used, and Cronbach's alpha was used for questionnaire’s reliability (0.876). Resultss and Discussion The increasing daily use of online social networks around the world leads to more problems regarding the security and privacy behavior of users in this attractive environment. While users can enjoy many benefits by using the service, at the same time they have many concerns about the privacy of their information. Despite privacy concerns, users continue to use these platforms and continue to share or self-disclose more personal information. Now, in order to deal with these threats, it is necessary to know what factors affect the security and privacy in social networks. According to many researches that have been conducted in this field, there are many factors that influence, but the factors that the current research focused on (after examining the level of awareness and importance of users to the two categories of security and privacy), two factors are individual factors and social engineering. was Individual factors being the factors that caused users to fail to use private settings, and social engineering was actually the abuse of trust or the deception of human agents to access confidential information and then abuse this information. The results showed that although the respondents attached great importance to topics related to security and privacy, they admitted that they were less aware of many of these topics than expected. The results of the next questions showed that the behaviors related to individual factors were less than expected among the respondents, while the behaviors related to social engineering were within the expected range and even beyond. Examining the demographic variables showed that women received a higher score than men in all the investigated variables. Also, the scores of undergraduate students from two levels higher than theirs were higher in all variables. Conclusion In today's interconnected world, many relationships and interactions with others are virtual and they have provided easy conditions for exchanging information, news, events with the ability to comment and share information with a wide audience and even create content. Therefore, social media has attracted more and more attention. This volume of information exchange has put the security and privacy of users in social networks at risk. To deal with these threats, users must know what factors affect security and privacy. Among the broad factors that have been mentioned in previous studies, the most important factors have been discussed in the current research, which can be called individual factors and social engineering. Now, considering the need to clarify the issue, in this research, the role of individual factors and social engineering in the behaviors related to the security and privacy of users in social networks has been discussed. The results of the questions confirmed that students, as active members of the society, are not as aware of issues related to security and privacy as they should be, and the percentage of this awareness was less than expected, but contrary to their relatively low awareness, fortunately, security and privacy are very important. They were private in social networks. Although it was expected that students, as an informed and cultured segment of the academic community, would have acceptable knowledge in the field of security and privacy, but unfortunately, the result of the present study was the opposite, and this is an alarm for all university and government officials who think about education and to inform the students. On the other hand, it is true that students attach great importance to their security and privacy in social networks, but certainly to realize this issue and actually its prerequisite, to be familiar with the rules of the privacy policy and how to make security and privacy settings. It is that until this important thing is not done correctly, the issue of giving importance to security and privacy cannot be given proper attention, even though this issue is important for students
| Item type: | Journal article (Paginated) |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | individual factors, Behavior, security, Privacy, Social Networks |
| Subjects: | D. Libraries as physical collections. > DC. Public libraries. |
| Depositing user: | HII Journal Human Information Interaction |
| Date deposited: | 25 Feb 2026 17:51 |
| Last modified: | 25 Feb 2026 17:51 |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10760/47541 |
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