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Information privacy is a fundamental and universal human right and a serious concern for individuals, organizations, societies, and governments worldwide (Bélanger & Crossler, 2011; Farayola et al., 2024). This privacy is becoming increasingly complicated in the era in which, throughout the globe, personal information has become a commodity that can be bought and sold (Wakefield, 2013(. With the growing use of social media platforms, protecting online information privacy has become a challenging endeavor as ubiquitous technologies can violate basic privacy principles through unregulated access to information and personal data stored and shared in different nodes of the global network (Becker, 2019; Romansky & Noninska, 2020). Security and privacy are at the center of information system (IS) artifacts (Lowry et al., 2017). Various risks have been identified from the breach of information privacy (Romansky & Noninska, 2020). In the digital age, individuals are continuously monitored as they consume products, services, and content (Zarsky, 2019(. The perception of privacy has continuously evolved from the original “right to be left alone” to the “right to be forgotten/to be erased” (Romansky & Noninska, 2020).
Privacy is defined and conceptualized in different ways and is impacted and perceived differently according to individual variances, cultures, and other factors (Miltgen & Peyrat-Guillard, 2014). Privacy concepts, definitions, and relationships are inconsistent across studies and disciplines, and privacy has been defined in various ways as “right,” “state of access,” “control,” “emotion,” “attitude,” “behavior,” “process,” and “goal” (Dinev et al., 2013; Smith et al., 2011). Individuals may perceive the same information with various degrees of sensitivity and with a lack of absolute agreement on what information is public, personal, or private (S. Lin & Armstrong, 2019). Therefore, the definition of privacy needs to be revisited. In this global age, technologically connected artifacts are embedded and woven into our daily lives; hence, reliance on these ubiquitous artifacts has become inevitable for individuals, companies, societies, and countries. Thus, privacy issues and concerns are critical for maintaining the privacy of individuals and data. The current era can be characterized as data-centric, in reference to the collection, aggregation, and analysis of data to identify individuals and their behaviors. The resulting knowledge can be used for various purposes (e.g., IS design and development, targeting and marketing, personalized e-business services, the tracing of consumer behaviors, and contact tracing).
Protecting information privacy requires that we consider heterogeneous threats, control data flows in ubiquitous technologies, and develop appropriate policies for personal data protection (Romansky & Noninska, 2020). However, challenges have emerged because of cross-border data flow and conflicts in protection laws among countries that organize and prioritize protection differently (De Busser, 2017).
Ozdemir et al. (2017) distinguished between privacy in an institutional context and in a peer context. They investigated the factors influencing individuals’ disclosure behaviors in a peer context. Individuals’ willingness to share information is affected by external factors such as culture, experience, personal characteristics, and regulatory jurisdictions (Lin et al., 2021). The usability and aesthetic graphics of IT artifacts can influence users’ perceptions of privacy risks and trust (Hoehle et al., 2019). Lin et al. (2021) investigated citizens’ perceptions of contact-tracing applications during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that relative advantage, compatibility, and trusting beliefs increased the intention to use contact-tracing applications.