Investigating User Photo Privacy Settings on Instagram

Abstract

Photo sharing has become increasingly easy with the rise of social media. Social networking sites (SNSs), such as Instagram and Facebook, are well known for their image-sharing capabilities. However, this brings the concern of photo privacy, such as who may see the images of a user who is included in a post. Photo privacy settings offer detailed and more secure ways to share a user’s photos, however, this would require SNS users to understand these settings. To better grasp users’ understanding of photo privacy settings, we conducted a structured interview with Instagram users. We found that users were aware of the majority of the privacy settings asked about and that they accurately perceived their photo privacy safety based on their knowledge of photo privacy settings.