One goal of administering surveys that ask users if they are aware of privacy settings and that
Facebook can share their personal information is to make users more aware of their options. We
checked each surveyed user’s profile after they had initially filled out the survey. As participants listed identity theft and stalking as their primary privacy concerns, we looked at the changes in the amount of contact information provided in Facebook profiles after taking the survey. We found that there were minimal changes in the amount of information that survey participants provided after taking the survey, as Figure 5 indicates. The percent decrease of users who provided their website address had the largest drop with a drop just under 12%. Additional emails being provided dropped by 8.33%, primary e-mails dropped 6.4%, and AIM screen name disclosure dropped by 2.44%. The amount of phone numbers and cell phone numbers remained
constant. The disclosures of current addresses increased by 8.33%. Although there were some
changes to the amount of information disclosed, the strong majority of users made no changes to
their profile as far as reducing the amount of information in their profile. The 25-50% changes
that we expected were not prevalent in our data.