What Would It Take for You to Tell Your Secrets to a Cloud? - Studying Decision Factors When Disclosing Information to Cloud Services

We investigate the end users’ behaviours and attitudes with regards to the control they place in the personal information that they disclose to cloud storage services. Three controlled experiments were carried out to study the influence in users’ decisions to retain or surrender control over their personal information depending on different factors. The results of these experiments reveal, among other things, the users’ willingness to surrender control over personal information that is perceived as non-sensitive in exchange for valuable rewards, and that users would value the possibility of knowing and controlling the parties who are granted access to their data in the cloud. Based on the results from the experiments we provide implications for the design of end-user tools that can promote transparency and accountability in cloud computing environments.