Online services often rely on processing users’ data, which can be either provided
directly by the users or combined from other services. Although users are aware of
the latter, it is unclear whether they are comfortable with such data combination,
whether they view it as beneficial for them, or the extent to which they believe
that their privacy is exposed. Through an online survey (N=918) and follow-up
interviews (N=14), we show that (1) comfort is highly dependent on the type of
data, type of service and on the existence of a direct relationship with a company,
(2) users have a highly different opinion about the presence of benefits for them,
irrespectively of the context, and (3) users perceive the combination of online
data as more identifying than data related to offline and physical behavior (such
as location). Finally, we discuss several strategies for companies to improve upon
these issues