Data privacy management behaviour of social media users in South Africa

Millard and Bascerano (2016)describe privacy at its core as the right to be let alone and ascribe the breach thereof to constitute a crime with the potential award of damages to the victim. In South Africa, the Bill of Rights within the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, affords privacy protection to every person.Nyoni and Velempini (2018)and Arzoglou et al. (2023)tendered that the rapid proliferation of innovative technologies has further intensified privacy concerns due to new opportunities for surveillance, tracking, detection and watching people.Kshetri and DeFranco (2020)note that the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach included the Facebook personal information of eighty-seven (87) million users that was used to profile and tailor advertisements to solicit votes for the intended political candidate. Similarly, numerous other social media platforms may be subject to similar risks and practices(Kshetri & DeFranco, 2020).Beigi and Liu (2020)are of the opinion that data breaches are an eventuality that must be pre-empted by both private and public organisations through the stringent implementation of information security measures and awareness programmes for staff and clients. The authors concede that stolen personal information can be used for identity theft and fraudulent financial transactions, resulting in personal losses, reputational harm and bad credit ratings for many people(Beigi & Liu, 2020).