Security News > 2020 > May > Is your smartphone pushing you to overshare?

The device people use to communicate online - a smartphone, desktop, or tablet - can affect the extent to which they are willing to overshare intimate or personal information about themselves, according to University of Pennsylvania researchers.

When consumers receive an online ad that requests personal information, they are more likely to provide it when the request is received on their smartphone compared to their desktop or laptop computer.

Co-author Shiri Melumad explains that "Writing on one's smartphone often lowers the barriers to revealing certain types of sensitive information for two reasons; one stemming from the unique form characteristics of phones and the second from the emotional associations that consumers tend to hold with their device."

Smartphone users know this effect well - when using their phones in public places, they often fixate so intently on its content that they become oblivious to what is going on around them.

Consistent with the tendency for smartphones to facilitate greater self-disclosure, compliance was systematically higher for ads targeted at smartphones versus PCs. The findings have clear and significant implications for firms and consumers.

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