Awareness of data privacy on social networks by students at Qassim University

In the socialization paradigm, digitalization is the primary function. Social Networking Sites (SNS) are a means of achieving advanced communication. For the last few decades, SNS have become the most widely used media of socialization and connectivity between people. SNS utilize personal information sharing, which raises privacy concerns in users due to the sensitive, confidential data which is necessarily gathered. This paper investigates awareness regarding the information privacy of students of Qassim University who use SNS. The research comprises a survey exploration to study how the students of Qassim University interact with SNS in terms of privacy. The literature review explores the theoretical privacy concerns with respect to SNS, including measuring awareness of privacy settings for their accounts in SNS. Also covered is student reaction to privacy violations. Data were collected using a questionnaire which sampled 913 respondents, who were selected from various levels and departments using random sampling methods. The analysis revealed that the majority of the users in every SNS are concerned about their privacy and personal information, and 69.4% contacted the government about privacy violations. This paper aims to investigate awareness regarding information privacy in the students of Qassim University using SNS.