Big Brother, erm Data is Watching and We Don’t Seem to Care.

First-place winner in the Academic Category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. The essay examines the problems of data collection and privacy

Käyttäjätietojen varjelu: Vaatimukset ja menetelmät

Tutkielma tarkastelee miten Euroopan unioni velvoittaa yrityksiä, jotka käsittelevät EU:n kansalaisten henkilötietoja ja miten uusi tietoturva-asetus vaikutti asiaan. Käsitellään mitä uhkia yritykset kohtaavat suojellessaan asiakastietojaan ja järjestelmiään, ja miten niitä torjutaan. Sekä ohjeistetaan käyttäjien keinoja maksimoida tietojensa turvallisuus. Tutkielmassa käydään myös läpi käyttäjätietojen yksityisyyden vaarantavia tekijöitä, kuten tietomurrot, ja esitellään ratkaisuja niiden ennaltaehkäisemiseksi, ja keinoja jo tapahtuneista onnettomuuksista toipumiseksi. Tämä tutkielma on kirjallisuuskatsaus, joten tieto perustuu pääosin alan olemassa olevaan kirjallisuuteen

Impact of Users’ Comprehension of the Privacy Policy of FemTech Apps on their Information Disclosure Intentions: The Mediating Effects of Privacy Fatigue and Privacy Data Control

FemTech stands for female technology, which encompasses a wide range of software, products, and services designed to improve women’s health through technology. Personal data used in this type of app are intimate, which highlights the importance of privacy, and therefore, comprehensibility of the privacy policies of such apps. This study explores the effect of user comprehension of privacy policies on their information disclosure intention through mediators such as privacy fatigue and privacy data control, which have rarely been studied. A scenario-based questionnaire was used to collect data from 236 females and SMART PLS 4.0 was used to conduct the analysis. Findings indicate that both mediators have an indirect-only mediation effect; however, the direction of the impact of privacy fatigue on disclosure intention was opposite to what was hypothesised. Privacy data control was found to be the stronger mediator. This study entails implications for privacy policymakers and mobile health application providers

Factors affecting social media use by entrepreneurs and the impact of this use on the opportunity recognition process

Social media is believed to play an essential role in supporting entrepreneurial business and opportunity recognition. However, little is known about the factors that drive social media use and how social media capabilities impact entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. In exploring the role of social media to understand the potential role of social media use on entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, the study was based on the Technological-Organization-Environmental (TOE) and the Opportunity Recognition Frameworks. A mixedmethod study was conducted with data collected from a developed economy (Australia) and a developing country (Nigeria). An initial research model was developed based on the extant review of literature on social media use and entrepreneur opportunity recognition. Firstly, qualitative data were collected via interviews with 14 entrepreneurs, which identified eight factors under four broad categories (technology, environment, individual and social media platform factors) that influence entrepreneur social media use. Also, five social media capabilities were identified (networking, searching, observing, experimenting, and social media data analytics) to drive entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. Comparing the qualitative data with themes developed from published literature, the initial research model was revised. In the second stage, a survey of 568 entrepreneurs was used to validate the model and its associated relationships. The analysis suggests that four general factors influence social media use; platform perception, absorptive capacity, platform abuse and external pressure. In addition, the use of social media was found to influence opportunity recognition through four of the five identified capabilities: searching, observing, experimenting, and data analytics. However, the findings indicate differences on how social media capability drives opportunity recognition amongst entrepreneur in Australia and Nigeria, which can be explained based on their individualist and collectivist culture respectively. Interestingly, the multi-group analysis revealed that the influence of social media capabilities on opportunity recognition might vary depending on the entrepreneur's gender and the age of their business. The theoretical contribution and practical implications of the findings to social media companies, entrepreneurs, and policymakers were discussed. The study limitation includes being a cross sectional study, focusing on small businesses and evaluating two countries

Animating the Ethical Demand:Exploring user dispositions in industry innovation cases through animation-based sketching

This paper addresses the challenge of attaining ethical user stances during the design process of products and services and proposes animation-based sketching as a design method, which supports elaborating and examining different ethical stances towards the user. The discussion is qualified by an empirical study of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in a Triple Helix constellation. Using a three-week long innovation workshop, UCrAc, involving 16 Danish companies and organisations and 142 students as empirical data, we discuss how animation-based sketching can explore not yet existing user dispositions, as well as create an incentive for ethical conduct in development and innovation processes. The ethical fulcrum evolves around Løgstrup's Ethical Demand and his notion of spontaneous life manifestations. From this, three ethical stances are developed; apathy, sympathy and empathy. By exploring both apathetic and sympathetic views, the ethical reflections are more nuanced as a result of actually seeing the user experience simulated through different user dispositions. Exploring the three ethical stances by visualising real use cases with the technologies simulated as already being implemented makes the life manifestations of the users in context visible. We present and discuss how animation-based sketching can support the elaboration and examination of different ethical stances towards the user in the product and service development process. Finally we present a framework for creating narrative representations of emerging technology use cases, which invite to reflection upon the ethics of the user experience.</jats:p

Analysis of obligatory disclosure regarding individual’s privacy

Disclosure of personal information online has raised concerns about individuals’ privacy. In order to protect personal information users undertake measures, such as configuring privacy settings and referring to the privacy policies of the organisation’s website before engaging in a transaction. This demonstrates users’ concerns with the availability of their personal information online. Besides the individuals themselves, organisations are also exposing the personal information of their staff to the general public by publishing it on their official website. The practice of publishing employees’ information on such websites is nominally to offer better services to customers, and it is one of the steps taken to improve governmental transparency. However, there are only limited studies on individuals’ (i.e. employees’) privacy issues in the context of organisational disclosure, and their internal responses to the relevant factors. To date, far too little attention has been paid to the disclosure of personal information by organisational websites. This research addresses this phenomenon, where the issue of third-party disclosure by an entity that has a direct relationship with the individuals is investigated in the Malaysian context. For this purpose, this research introduces ‘obligatory disclosure’ as a conceptual framework for this study and adds to the knowledge of privacy-in-public in the context of public administration. The results of the study indicate that while obligatory disclosure was commonly believed to be a normal phenomenon, it creates a vulnerable environment for individuals. The study also found that employees’ concerns with privacy were influenced by the specific context. In addition, low levels of privacy concern and lack of privacy awareness regarding this phenomenon were identified. The study recommends that there is a need for a regulatory approach to protect employees’ information on organisation websites, and privacy should be incorporated as an important element of obligatory disclosure practice