VOHRA+A+focus+group+report

vohra a

Focus Group Rationale **
 * Here are my focus group findings which I ran with five college students about their privacy concern on most social networking sites. We are able to cover all five questions that were developed by our team. **

Social networks are increasingly subject to attacks by hackers and predators. Hackers are now targeting users by sending messages to their social networking sites impersonating their friends and predators that frequent these sites have been charged with kidnapping, raping, and even murdering young women. Our team wished to determine how these threats affect Gen-Y's use of social networks and whether males and females view these threats differently. Information from these sessions will allow Proximity clients to promote the safety of their social networking sites when targeting Gen-Y users. ** Setting and Participants ** The 45 minute session was held in the Towson University on Friday march 19, 2010. There were 1 male and 4 female’s participants.

1. Samia, 22, a College Park, graduate pre med major. 2. Tasleem, 21, a HCC, senior business major. 3. Morgan, 24, a CCBC, senior bio major. 4. Abdul, 25, a Towson, graduate business major. 5. Naila, 22, a HCC, senior Cisco major.

** Session topics ** Everyone is concerned but Samia is very concerned about her privacy on social networking sites. She says “I am very concerned about the privacy on Face book. I have everything on private and don’t accept requests from random people. And I also don’t feel safe on Face book because everyone on Face book can see my profile picture, and I hate the fact that I cannot hide it from people who are not in my friend list.”
 * How concerned are you about your privacy and online safety? **

None of the participants had experienced of any viruses but they do receive spam e-mails from other users. Tasleem had account on Face book which was hacked. “The person who hacked my account was posting inappropriate pictures of me and was blackmailing me. After I got out of that situation, I stopped posting my pictures online and changed my real name to something else,” said Tasleem. ** Do you know how to set your privacy settings? ** Yes, each participant knows how to set privacy settings. What kind of information do you make available to which people on your social networking site? ** Everyone has high privacy level alert setup on their social networking pages. Most individuals said they allow their friends to see their information, such as birth date, e-mail address, group networks, pictures and friend list. Except Morgan and Abdul said, they do not allow their family members and few individuals on their list to see any personal information at all. Do you use social networking as a dating portal? If you do, have you met any of these people in real life and have there been any problem? ** None of the participants uses social networking as a dating portal because there are many dangerous people out there. All the females said they don’t think it is safe, where as Abdul who is the only male said, “I tried this site as a dating and networking use, more than just staying in touch with friends.” My focus group has heard a lot of stories about people who have been using social networking’s like Face book as a dating portal. Naila said, “People who uses social networking as dating site may end up meeting the person and having sexual relationships with each other and it is not safe.” The Group was also worried about their own security.
 * Have you experienced any virus or predator attacks via your social networking sites? **

The focus group revealed that the participants · Are really worried about their privacy on social networking sites · Wants to stay connected friends and family thru the social networking sites · Wants to control who can see their information · are worried about hackers and predator taken over their account
 * Findings **

These finding are based on my focus group participants’ view and will be compared with my other group member’s finding to see how much are Gen-Y users are concern about their privacy on social networking sites.