Privacy as Commodity: Willingness to Sell Access to Private Information over the Network in a Virtual Environment

This research examines the willingness of users in an anonymous virtual environment to sell access to their social network profile. The experiment was held in Second Life, a virtual world that requires and stresses the importance of anonymity of its users. Participants were faced with an offer to connect to their Facebook accounts and allow access to their profile, thus undermining their anonymity in Second Life, in exchange for varying amounts of money. Results show that even in an anonymous environment, money plays a great role and users tend to allow access to information for small sums of money (1 USD and less). But a closer look at the results reveals that many participants have created fake Facebook accounts in order to enjoy the compensation without waiving their privacy.