Dwyer, Catherine Ann, and Starr Roxanne Hiltz. "Designing privacy into online communities." Available at SSRN 1305278 (2008).

This study investigates privacy management practices among users of Facebook and MySpace, revealing that despite the availability of privacy management features, a significant portion of users do not utilize these tools effectively. Out of 222 subjects, nearly one in five experienced a privacy incident in the past year, yet less than half of those affected took steps to review or change their privacy settings. These findings highlight the inadequacy of current privacy management designs in social networking sites and suggest a re-conceptualization of privacy as an integral quality of online spaces, rather than as a series of user-managed settings. The study offers an analysis of existing privacy management practices and proposes recommendations for enhancing the design of privacy features in social software.