Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

Chapter Six: Results and discussion 
The study collected and processed a lot of information from both the primary and 
secondary data sources. To begin with, this chapter will discuss the outcomes of the 
secondary data collection first before moving on to the most comprehensive presentation of 
the results of the primary data. 
6.1
 
Secondary data results 
There were two secondary data sources and the paper wishes to begin by disclosing 
the results of the survey done by Pew Research Center that was successfully undertaken by 
607 respondents (Madden, 2016). The first question that respondents were to answer was 
whether they were aware of the claims that the US government was monitoring their 
communications. This question related to the privacy of their communication across all 
media, not only social media. 43% said that they were aware of those claims, 44% said they 
had once or twice heard those claims, while 5% claimed that there were no such allegations.
The next section asked respondents about their concerns over the issues of increased 
spying by businesses and governments on their personal information. The respondents were 
asked to state whether they felt that they still had control over their information. 91% of the 
respondents said that they believed that they had lost their control and 88% said that it was 
impossible to delete their information online. 80% of the respondents who were registered on 
at least one social media platform said that they had concerns over third-party businesses and 
the level access they were being given to a user’s data. 70% of the respondents said that they 
were also concerned about the government accessing the information that they shared on 
social media without seeking for their consent first. 80% of the respondents said that US 

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citizens ought to have been concerned about the government monitoring their 
communications across various media. When asked whether the government should have 
been more involved in regulating adverts, 64% were for the options, with 34% against it, and 
2% undecided. The respondents were asked to either agree or disagree with a statement that 
said that increased access to personal data led to more efficient services online. 61% of the 
respondents disagreed with the statement strongly, 30% disagreed, and 9% slightly agreed 
with it. However, when asked to pick a side as to whether they were ready to share their 
personal information with companies for free services, the results were unexpected. A total of 
334 respondents affirmed that they would be willing to share their data so as to continually 
access free services such as emails. 
The third section looked into the confidence levels that users had with some 
communication media. Respondents ranked social media platforms as the most insecure 
communication media, and thus they had the lowest confidence levels about it. Landlines 
were seen to be the most secure communication media, closely followed by cell phone calls, 
and text messages. 81% of the respondents felt not very secure or totally insecure when using 
social media platforms for communication. This was closely followed by 68% of respondents 
who felt the same about communicating over chat or instant messages. 

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Figure 1: Confidence levels with communication media 
The next section asked the respondents about their wish to protect their privacy online 
and whether they thought it was possible for one to be anonymous. 61% said that they wished 
to do more to protect their online privacy, while the rest said that they had already done 
enough. About anonymity, 76% of the respondents claimed that it was impossible for them to 
be truly anonymous online. Concerning their reputation online, it seemed that the 
demography of users above the age of 50 were more vigilant about their information online. 
However, in total, 62% of the respondents affirmed that they had searched for their own 
names on the Internet and 47% believed that their names had been searched by other people. 
A very vigilant 6% of the respondents affirmed that they had set up an alert system to notify 
them whenever their names were mentioned anywhere online.
The following section enquired from the respondents, the contextual factors that may 
have determined whether they did or did not disclose their information online. Concerning 
the use of their names, 58% of the respondents agreed that they always posted on social 
media using their actual names, while 42% said that they preferred posting without using 
their real names. On the part of contexts that forced users to disclose their information online, 
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Landline Cell phones
calls
Text
messages
Emails
Chat/IM
Social
Media
Confidence levels with communication media
Very secure
Somehow secure
Not very secure
Totally insecure

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24% said that there were work-related policies to do so, and 11% said that they did so to 
promote themselves online. The rest said that they had no contextual influences forcing them 
to disclose their real information. 
The last section wanted the respondents to rank the sensitivity of their different 
private data that they feared being disclosed. It was seen that most were afraid of their social 
security number being revealed online. Surprisingly, they were not so much concerned about 
their purchasing habits being recorded or their political views. However, 77% of them were 
either very or somewhat sensitive about their emails being read, while 83% were sensitive 
about their physical location being tracked by either social media platforms, applications, or 
websites. 75% were sensitive about their phone address books being read off, 66% feared 
their birth date being collected online, and 65% were sensitive about their browsing habits 
and searches being collected. 

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Moving on to the next research done by Alawawi, there were quite some important 
revelations that his study came up with. His research was centered within a certain university, 
whereby 50 students were selected to do a short questionnaire-based interview concerning 
social media and privacy (Alalawi, 2015). The students, who were selected, were above 18 
years and were taking courses related to journalism and communication. The first part of the 
questionnaire asked the respondents to give their online privacy concerns and their level of 
knowledge about the existing privacy issues. 98% of the respondents responded in the 
general direction that they were highly concerned about their online privacy, while 2% 
seemed unbothered by their privacy.
In the second part of the interview, the respondents were asked about their attitudes 
towards social media networking and how they used social media. 18 of the 50 respondents 
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Social
security
number
Phone
conversa
tions
Emails
Physical
location
Address
book
Birth
date
Website
s visited
Searches
made
Political
views
Purchasi
ng
habits
Very sensitive
90
54
52
50
45
41
27
24
20
8
Somewhat sensitive
5
27
25
32
30
25
43
41
31
33
Not too sensitive
2
13
13
11
16
19
20
22
30
44
Not sensitive
1
4
7
5
6
14
8
10
17
14
Perc
en
ta
ge
Axis Title
Sensitivity levels of different types of personal information
Very sensitive
Somewhat sensitive
Not too sensitive
Not sensitive