  While digital divide studies primarily focused on access to information and
communications technology (ICT) in the past, its influence on other associated
dimensions such as privacy is becoming critical with a far-reaching impact on
the people and society. For example, the various levels of government
legislation and compliance on information privacy worldwide have created a new
era of digital divide in the privacy preservation domain. In this article, the
concept "digital privacy divide (DPD)" is introduced to describe the perceived
gap in the privacy preservation of individuals based on the geopolitical
location of different countries. To better understand the DPD phenomenon, we
created an online questionnaire and collected answers from more than 700
respondents from four different countries (the United States, Germany,
Bangladesh, and India) who come from two distinct cultural orientations as per
Hofstede's individualist vs. collectivist society. However, our results
revealed some interesting findings. DPD does not depend on Hofstede's cultural
orientation of the countries. For example, individuals residing in Germany and
Bangladesh share similar privacy concerns, while there is a significant
similarity among individuals residing in the United States and India. Moreover,
while most respondents acknowledge the importance of privacy legislation to
protect their digital privacy, they do not mind their governments to allow
domestic companies and organizations collecting personal data on individuals
residing outside their countries, if there are economic, employment, and crime
prevention benefits. These results suggest a social dilemma in the perceived
privacy preservation, which could be dependent on many other contextual factors
beyond government legislation and countries' cultural orientation.
