UK consumers are resigned to poor data security, research finds

Written by Wei Shi
07 June 2019 @ 11:17

The new EY research in UK’s digital households found over four in ten consumers believed their data would never be fully secure, despite the recent regulatory changes including GDPR.

The consulting firm EY has published the security section of its annual survey of UK households about their digital lives. The good news is the majority of consumers are aware of the new privacy data protection regulations. Close to seven out of ten consumers know GDPR and “what this means for how their data is stored, managed and used”. The bad news is the confidence in the effectiveness of the legal measures is low. Only 43% of consumers “believe that the changes resulting from GDPR will significantly improve the security of their personal data”. Worse still, almost equal number of consumers (41%) have almost given up, thinking it “impossible to keep their personal data secure when using the internet or internet-enabled devices”.

When it comes to who to trust to keep personal data secure, broadband providers and utility companies came on top, winning the trust of 28% and 21% of the households surveyed. On the other end, mobile app developers and social networks fared the worst, being trusted by only 2% and 3% of all households. Mobile operators and pay-TV providers also came closer to the bottom of the table than to the top.

EY thinks at least three lessons can be learned from the findings:

Businesses should put trust at the heart of all the customer interactions;
Businesses should communicate about security with purpose, clarity, and consistency;
Businesses should ensure that their innovation agenda should be built on an ethical data management system.

This report is part of the overall “Decoding the digital home” project and was made on the survey of 2,500 UK households.