9 out of 10 european internet users are willing to share their personal data with sites and apps in exchange for free access to digital services, according to Kaspersky’s new survey.
The survey was conducted in nine european countries regarding their data privacy and reveals that despite privacy protection concerns, users are willing to ask companies monitor their internet behaviour in exchange of sales (45%), higher Internet facilitation (43%) and “free services/goods” (40%)
Even though, almost every european Internet user (95%) believes that data privacy is essential, only half of them (52%) say that they really check how many organizations have access to their personal data.
This has caused concerns about data privacy protection throughout Europe, with almost 8 out of 10 (84%) respondents being concerned that their personal data will fall in the wrong hands while 2/3 of them (66%) worry that their data will be stolen and used in a malicious way.But these concerns do not necessarily reflect behaviours.
Consumers in all countries have low level of confidence concerning personal data shares.Totally, Amazon and Google are the most reliable organizations offering data security and responsibility while Facebook is considered the less reliable tech company (29%) as far as data protection is concerned.
At the same time, however, the lure of easy-to-use internet services has led consumers to taking less precautions in order to protect their data privacy or take control of their their personal data from these organizations.In fact, almost 6 out of 10 (58%) will accept all cookies when they surf the web hastily and 3 out of 10 (30%) use the same password for many different sites or apps.This is even higher in Denmark (35%).
Denmark is also the country whose residents have the lower concern that their personal data will end up in the wrong hands ( just 77% vs 94% in Portugal).On the contrary, France is the country with the lowest confidence levels towards every organization-only 36% believe that the government can secure their data.
“Now most of our personal data are found online increasung the danger of ending up in the wrong hands.”, commeneted David Emm, principal security researcher of Kaspersky.
“European consumers don’t feel that they have the control over the organizations that have access to their data.Despite this fear, many had accepted data privacy invasions in exchange for more convenient digital services.It’s never too late to try and recover the control of our digital ID and protect our online data.In order to take the control of their digital ID, consumers should be alerted about the information they share with online organizations, re-examine cookies policy and use stronger, unique passwords for every digital service.”.