Privacy and Security Aspects of Indian Population While Using Online Social Network: An Analysis

The popularity of online social networking sites is growing day by day. Well-known online social networking (OSN) sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Myspace are having millions of users across the globe. The user base of Facebook alone is more than 3 Billion. The number of users of all such OSNs is increasing tremendously in India as well as around the world. This paper focuses on the points like whether the user has read and understood, terms of use of the OSN joined, privacy policies of the OSNs, who can see the user’s email ID, contact information, posting information about himself/herself, posting videos, photos on own profile, etc. 700+ Indians were contacted for this survey using a questionnaire consisting of 27 questions. The results of this survey indicate that significant difference is observed in the awareness regarding privacy and security between the male and female participants. The privacy and security concerns are more among the Indian females compared to the Indian males.