Consumers Want Transparency and Control over Online Privacy

As part of its commitment of Data Protection Day (or Data Privacy Day for North Americans) Microsoft yesterday released results of a new consumer survey about attitudes to privacy.

The survey participants are reported as being ‘technologically sophisticated’ customers from the US, UK, Belgium, France and Germany.  The EU country results have been aggregated into a single audience to compare with the US attitudes, however the data appears to show in fact that whilst there are small differences in scale, the concerns of users were broadly similar on both sides of the Atlantic.

I think there are two key takeaways from this survey.  Firstly, 80%+ of Europeans want more information about what data is being collected about them, how it is used, and whom it is being shared with.  It is clear that people think companies could be doing a lot more to make this information easily available.

In terms of who has responsibility for protecting online privacy, people believe that all players – individuals, companies and governments have a significant role to play in protecting online privacy. However, more than two thirds believe that companies need to be providing privacy controls and technical solutions to help protect their privacy.

Here at the Cookie Collective we are committed to developing those solutions.