Trading off convenience and privacy in social login

Social login enables users of digital services to access third-party websites and mobile applications by leveraging their existing login credentials from large digital platforms. This technology simplifies the login and account creation process, but also raises concerns about user privacy. We examine the trade-off between convenience and privacy in the context of social login and empirically show that users who register for a financial services website using social login exhibit shorter tenures and lower levels of activity on the website compared to other users. These findings suggest that the marginal privacy cost associated with social login is higher than its marginal convenience benefit for most of the users of the platform.