Online privacy concerns and privacy protection strategies among older adults in East York, Canada

Anabel Quan‐Haase and Dennis Ho

Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 2020, vol. 71, issue 9, 1089-1102

Abstract: As news headlines report on high‐profile online privacy breaches and the potential negative consequences for users, users are becoming concerned about their privacy. While much research has focused on the concerns of younger generations, few studies have investigated older adults, specifically those aged 65+ years. This study analyzes in‐depth interviews with 40 older adults living in East York, Toronto, Canada, to investigate their online privacy concerns and the strategies they use to mitigate these concerns. We find that East York older adults are mostly concerned about security privacy concerns followed by institutional privacy concerns and only minimally concerned about social privacy. The greatest concerns included information misuse by unknown others and unauthorized access to their personal information. We found that, for some older adults, their high privacy concerns precluded them from taking full advantage of the potential benefits of digital media. East York older adults varied considerably in their use of privacy protection strategies; some older adults used no strategies, while others were eager to protect their privacy using all strategies at their disposal.

Date: 2020
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