Today is Data Privacy Day, an annual reminder of one of the most important issues of our time. As the 21st century continues, data privacy becomes more and more relevant and pressing. The passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on January 1st of this year in particular has caused a massive ripple effect across the country. Since the vast majority of tech companies operate in the state of California, they’re now being forced into compliance at the risk of facing legal and financial consequences. And what’s more, many of these companies are applying these changes across the country to simplify internal processes. To celebrate this progression, we sent out a few surveys to our community centered around data privacy issues. Here’s a selection of what we gleaned:
Do you feel you show an accurate representation of yourself on social media?
83% said yes.
Are you currently opting out of data sales or setting high privacy settings in online platforms and applications?
48% said yes.
What steps do you take to ensure your data remains private?
In a multiple choice survey, 40% said they don’t give their info to untrustworthy sites, 39% said they read terms of service closely, 28% said they delete cookies, 16% said they change passwords, 10% said they encrypt data, 12% said they delete their information.
Are you going to update your privacy/ security settings on one of your accounts?
60% said yes.
Have you opted out of data sales in any data sales platforms?
66% said yes.
Which search engines will you update your privacy settings for in the next month?
In a multiple choice survey, 66% said Google, 28% said Yahoo, 27% said Internet Explorer, 24% said Safari, 22% said Mozilla Firefox, and 18% said Bing.
Which smart assistants will you update your privacy settings for in the next month?
In a multiple choice survey, 44% said Google Assistant, 26% said Amazon Alexa, 24% said Siri, 17% said Cortana.
Do you educate your friends and family about ways to protect the privacy of their data?
78% said yes.
Do you use ad blockers?
66% said yes.
Did the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data breach worry you?
42% said yes.
Do you take special steps to keep your data on social media safe?
70% said yes.
Do you have your social media set to private or public?
66% said public.
Do you limit what your followers and network see on your social media?
72% said yes.
Do you allow location sharing on social media apps when not using?
50% said yes.
How important is browser privacy to you?
66% said very, 22% said kind of, 12% said no.
In sum, it’s clear to us that our users are actively taking steps to protect themselves and their data online. In the questions above, we hope you’ll find some reminders of the different ways you can take action to protect yourself today. While our legislature is slowly catching up, unfortunately it’s still mostly up to the consumer to look out for themselves, so we hope you will. Be sure to peruse our other Data Tips blogs for different steps you can take to protect yourself online.
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