Is It Harmful? Measuring People's Perceptions of Online Privacy Issues

We report preliminary findings from an online study, identi- fying people’s attitudes toward privacy issues. The results confirm some of the previous research findings regarding demographic and contextual dependencies of privacy per- ceptions. The research presents a new scale for measuring attitudes to privacy issues that is based on privacy harms. The results suggest that people consider privacy harms in generic and simplified terms, rather than as separated is- sues suggested in legal research. This research identified major factors that people tend to think of while considering online privacy.