The internet has fundamentally changed the way people communicate. With all the information that we are sharing over the internet, and the ways which companies want to use our information, the importance of keeping our private information secure has increased. This thesis aims to discover what attitudes internet users have against privacy on the internet, and what ? if anything ? they are doing to protect their personal privacy.We distributed an online survey to internet users in the Stockholm area, and conducted three interviews with persons in our target population. The results of these studies show that people in general are very aware of privacy concerns on the internet, but that their attitudes toward how important personal privacy on the internet is, differ somewhat..

Most people would agree that privacy is a civil right, and that we should not be deprived of this civil right for other than legitimate reasons. The difficulty lies instead in how to decide where the legislative boundary should be drawn for the right to privacy, in order to protect the individual from an undue intrusion of his privacy. There are a number of areas where the right to privacy comes in conflict with opposite interests. One of these areas is credit report. In this master thesis the author discusses questions as, what is the meaning of the word privacy, and whether the protection of privacy is sufficient in the legislation concerning credit report? Also a comparative study of the Swedish and the English regulation is performed.

This master?s thesis is about freedom of information ideas in the European Union data retention directive, 2006/24/EC. The directive means that data about electronic communications services will be retentioned. The aim of the thesis is to examine what ideas related to freedom of information that appear in the directive and how these ideas belong to the ideology of freedom of information that is common within the library community and to the juridical restrictions. In the light of surveillance tendencies that have occurred over the last years, the most well-known is probably the USA Patriot Act, it is interesting to study how freedom of information ideas appears when surveillance is legislated.

The purpose of this masters? thesis is to investigate how public librarians perceive privacy in connection with new technology in libraries. The main research questions are: - How do librarians experience the phenomenon privacy in the library?- How do librarians experience the relation between privacy and technology in the library?- What does this say about the relationship between privacy, technological development and library work?The study was performed with a phenomenographic methodological approach. The material consists of qualitative interviews with eight librarians who work at public libraries where the technology RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) has been implemented.

Friend lists allow Facebook users to group their friends and may be used to share certain information only with those in a specific list. This function has been around for several years, but has never gained any particular popularity among users, most of whom probably did not know it even existed a couple of years ago. In the fall of 2011, however, the function was updated and made more visible on the site.There are several possible uses of friend lists, such as privacy control, filtering of the news feed, self-presentation and targeted information sharing. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which friend lists are used by students today, as well as why students actually use their lists, i.e. for what purposes.Judging from the results of this study in comparison with earlier research, there seems to have been a somewhat recent increase in the awareness of the fact that friend lists actually do exist, but still most users tend not to utilize them.

On March 1, 2012, Google introduced its new privacy policy which is applicable to all Google services. This means that search history may be saved by Google indefinitely and may also be associated with the specific account during the first 18 months. We assume that few people read this policy and we have hypotheses that a deeper knowledge of the contents of the privacy policy affects how users perceive Google as a company and/or the usage of Google services. In this study, we have conducted surveys at the IT University of Gothenburg, to investigate how many participants that have read or possess some knowledge of the privacy policy. We have found that very few participants claim to have read the privacy policy.

I dagens hälso- och sjukvård behandlas patientuppgifter elektroniskt i patientjournalsystem. Uppgifterna ska behandlas med högsta möjliga säkerhetsåtgärder eftersom de innehåller känslig information om patienter. Patientuppgifterna behöver dock alltid vara tillgängliga för att vårdgivarna ska kunna ge bästa tänkbara vård. På grund av att hanteringen av patientinformation är kritisk, måste IT-systemen följa regler och upprätthålla en hög integritet. Privacy by Design (PbD) är tänkt att adressera problemet genom att integritetsaspekten får stå i fokus genom IT-systemets hela livscykel.

Concern about personal privacy continues to grow among online users along with the fact that new technologies help online companies to share user's private information. Still the usage of online entities such as social networks and e-commerce sites continue to increase. This raises the question of why online users act in such a contradictory and irrational way.Our study examines what impact one recently developed application called social login, which is provided by several social networks and used by millions of online companies, has on consumer's evaluation of online brands when they are primed for various types of information concerning privacy issues. Our assumptions are built up on the theory of cognitive, dissonance and suggest that there will be no differences in evaluation of the brands due to the human need to rationalize their existing behavior and attitudes when they receive new or contradicting information. The potential effects are measured by a manipulation presented in a survey distributed in an online environment to a sample of users (n=,154).

Since social media is used more today than just a few years ago, it is easier to share our lives to the public in just a few seconds. Social media is easily accessible on smartphones, tablets and computers which allow us users to use them whenever we want.Instagram is an example of a very popular social media today. In this paper we focus on how younger women think about their privacy when using and publishing pictures on Instagram. We have been using a qualitative research method in which ten people were interviewed. All respondents agreed that privacy is important when publishing pictures or videos on Instagram, but there were also some differences between users with public and private accounts.

Bakgrund: Det konsumenter oftast inte är medvetna om vid deras Internetanvändning är att de iakttas av företag. Företagen samlar avsiktligt in personlig information och spårar vilka hemsidor och produkter eller tjänster de intresserat sig av genom så kallade webb-spårningssystem. I samma takt som tekniker så som webb-spårningssystem börjat användas har också etisk marknadsföring på Internet blivit ett diskuterat och aktuellt ämne. Etisk marknadsföring på Internet handlar om vad som uppfattas som accepterat beteende av konsumenterna och företag måste ta hänsyn till konsumentens etiska koder.Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka konsumenters uppfattningar om webbspårningssystem utifrån etiska koder.Forskningsfråga: Vad är etiskt accepterat användande av webb-spårningssystem från konsumentens perspektiv?Metod: I studien har en kvalitativ forskningsstrategi samt semi-strukturerade intervjuer tillämpats.Slutsats: Slutsatsen i studien är att konsumenters uppfattningar om webb-spårningssystem inte alltid uppfyller konsumentens etiska koder.

Förtroende har sitt ursprung i trygghet och säkerhet. För att lämna ifrån sig personlig information krävs att man känner förtroende och således även trygghet och säkerhet. Tillgång till personlig information är en viktig konkurrensfördel för ett företag. Samtidigt utgör den personliga informationen ett problem eftersom många kunder känner en oro att lämna ifrån sig denna. Oron beror på osäkerhet om vad som kan hända med den information man lämnar, denna oro kan i sin tur leda till brist på förtroende.

In the light of new technology health care is now given the opportunity to form a more mobile way of working that would bring about potential gains in terms of efficiency and quality. On the other hand, a more mobile health care also requires a more generous handling of personal information, something that may raise issues in terms of privacy. This study shows that the privacy of the patient requires two things: (i) that the personal information of the patient is handled in a way that generates her an overall positive expected utility and that (ii) the negative expected utility that each risk of an information leakage causes is offset by the expected utility it also makes possible. The first requirement (i) is shown, in comparison with today?s way of working, to be met due to the potential gains in efficiency and quality in combination with no increase in the probability of informational leakage or negative effects of such a leakage. The second requirement (ii) was also considered met since no separate risks of information leakage could be identified that was not offset by the gains it made possible in terms of expected utility..

No other object is in our constant possession such as the mobile phone. The smartphone has been transformed into a worldwide forum for information-rich exchanges between individuals and companies, by which this rapid access to the smartphone has created and continues to create opportunities in terms of communication. Many researchers of today undertake the challenge of studying the smartphone's role as a marketing channel, and the role of the channel is now undoubtedly central in marketing. However, as the importance of marketing communication increases and despite the fact that survey methods are exceedingly dependent on a channel to fulfill its purpose, namely carry out questionnaires, there has been surprisingly little attention to the study of the channel's role and importance when carrying out surveys. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the choice of a communication channel affects the survey outcome and, if so, further investigate how survey methods differ in terms of consumers' attitude and also their perception of their privacy.

The aim of this thesis is to study what impact the USA Patriot act has had on American libraries. The authors intent has been to see what changes have occurred in the librarians work-routines and to study their attitudes toward the Patriot act. The authors have also intended to find out what the consequences would be for the libraries. The findings are related to Swedish circumstances. The material used in this thesis consists of six interviews conducted at three libraries in the Bay Area in California.

Förtroende har sitt ursprung i trygghet och säkerhet. För att lämna ifrån sig personlig information krävs att man känner förtroende och således även trygghet och säkerhet. Tillgång till personlig information är en viktig konkurrensfördel för ett företag. Samtidigt utgör den personliga informationen ett problem eftersom många kunder känner en oro att lämna ifrån sig denna. Oron beror på osäkerhet om vad som kan hända med den information man lämnar, denna oro kan i sin tur leda till brist på förtroende.