The majority (67%) fear that big tech firms know their location, and 53% have turned off data sharing because they fear big tech companies are spying on them
The overwhelming majority (87%) of UK consumers fear big tech firms such as Google and Facebook are listening in to their personal devices because they receive targeted online or social media advertisement, according to a survey of 500 UK consumers conducted by pCloud, Europe’s leading cloud storage and file sharing solution.
The poll highlighted how the majority of Brits (51%) do not know how to turn off data sharing.
“There is clear unease among the public regarding surveillance by the so-called big tech firms, which simply has to be addressed,” said Tunio Zafer, founder and CEO at pCloud. “The boycotting of social media channels in protest of harmful content issues should have woken them up, but they need to take more immediate measures to tackle the cause of this concern,” he added.
Facebook was deemed the least trustworthy company when it comes to data security, followed by Google, while Apple was considered the most secure out of the big tech firms.
Alarmingly 59% of respondents also said they expect their data to be leaked by one of these firm. Of those surveyed, 48% weren’t sure if their data had been leaked, while 18% do know their data has been leaked already.
Of those that have had their data leaked, the majority say that Facebook/Instagram was the source of the leak, sitting at 48%. Despite being the most trusted platform, Apple was second in this order at 34%.
When asked about whether Facebook limits freedom of expression, 58% feel it does, yet only 28% believe the news appearing on Facebook is fake news. Just under half (42%) believe that the search results they see are controlled by Google, as opposed to being neutral in nature.
