Despite these risks, many privacy mechanisms of online social communities
are purposefully weak to facilitate joining the community and sharing
information. Additionally, there is little awareness and use of existing privacy
mechanisms among active users [6]. Research has offered several explanations
for this under-utilization of privacy options, including poor interface design,
permissive default settings [7], social conformance [6], and inherent trust in
the online community [1, 2]. In many cases, users are unwilling or unable to
put forth the effort to modify and manage their privacy settings to protect
their personal information. By improving usability, we believe we can address
some of these issues and help users become more comfortable with modifying
privacy options.