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Exploring Personal Data Sensitivity

The aim of this exploratory research is to investigate people's perception of data sensitivity and their willingness to share such data. There has been little research within the UAE that identified the public/ordinary people's perspective of what is considered sensitive data and what is not, and which data can/not be shared with others such as social media applications, e-commerce websites, and friends. To achieve the aim of this research, empirical data was collected using a survey designed to evaluate the sensitivity of five categories of data types (personal, contact, online life, financial, and secure identifiers). The research findings revealed that the respondents tended to feel relatively low sensitivity to personal data, but they tended to feel a higher degree of sensitivity to financial-related data, and they are also not willing to share it. However, some personal data items like medical history records were largely deemed as not sensitive according to participants. This paper presents and discusses new insights and research implications based on findings from the UAE context.