Partner Article

IEEE survey: consumers want education on personal data

Consumers are being kept in the dark and are demanding more be done to educate the public on how their personal data is being used and shared online, according to a new OnePoll survey commissioned by IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organisation dedicated to advancing technology for humanity.

According to the survey of 1000 UK adults, while consumers are aware they generate vast amounts of data online, 81% believe that the public should be better educated more generally on how their data is being used online, while more than half wish to seek clarity from individual websites on their specific use of personal data.

The public call for businesses to be more transparent and provide fair exchange of benefit for the use of personal data is also being echoed by those within the industry and was a major topic of discussion at the Web Summit 2016 in Lisbon last week.

IEEE Member Diogo Monica, Security Lead at Docker, said: “Education is important, but the onus for change has to rest with companies. In the same way we have service level agreements, there needs to be an agreement in place between organisations and the consumer on what data is being collected and for how long. Furthermore, companies should aggregate users’ data in order to anonymise the information they hold and ensure that individuals cannot be identified.”

However, companies need to ensure there is complete clarity when speaking to their customers on such a complex matter and avoid any technical jargon.

“You cannot consent to something you do not understand. One way to solve this issue is for companies to not assume the consent of users, but rather for users to have the option to opt in or out of sharing their data,” Monica continued.

To date, this lack of understanding has affected public perception on the benefits of data sharing and analytics. The IEEE survey found that 65% of consumers are unable to cite a single good use of their personal data online. Worryingly for online companies, 65% are able to cite a negative experience as a result of a website using their personal data.

The survey further found 85% of consumers are unable to accurately say how many websites hold their personal data and well over half (54%) claim they would feel more comfortable sharing their data with websites if they were explicitly told how it was being used.

“Consumers are certainly left in the dark on how much of their data is going to who, and this is a product of many companies approaching data collection in the wrong way. Too many websites take the approach of collecting as much data on consumers as they can, with little consideration whether it is valuable or not,” Monica continued. “Recently, this has been changing as a direct result of the increasing number and severity of data breaches forcing organisations to be more cautious when it comes to data collection and storage. Good data practices are now becoming a differentiator in the market.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Adam Wright .