Study shows 1/3rd of Facebook users will share lesser on the platform following the data breach that was reported

Velocity MR announced the results of their pan India study to understand the sentiment of Indian net users and their awareness of this threat. This is particularly pertinent considering the GDPR compliance that is coming into effect in many countries to protect user data from online misuse.

The national study was conducted among a sample size of 5800 respondents and covered prominent Indian cities including Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Pune.

Adds Jasal Shah, Managing Director & CEO of Velocity MR, “Every netizen is leaving a trail of digital footprints with everything that they click online. From personal information to financial data to biometric details all this data is accessible in some form or the other on various foreign servers that one cannot fathom. With the new GDPR regime coming into play, it is a wakeup call for internet companies to tighten their security policies with immediate effect.”

He further adds, “Unfortunately, the crimes related to the cyber world are not controlled currently by any qualified regulation. Social media that was synonymous with Facebook has suddenly opened a Pandora’s box with the news about Cambridge Analytica misusing Facebook user’s data. We decided to roll out a study to understand the impact of such digital data threats among Indian internet users and their awareness about this.”

Highlights of the Study:

• 4 in every 10 respondents state that their opinion about Facebook has gone down in recent months
• 1/3rd of the respondents said that they would share lesser on Facebook, even though they will continue to be on Facebook
• The higher age group of 46-60 years is more willing to continue using Facebook as before
• The awareness level of the Cambridge Analytics – Facebook data breach is low among females and the younger age group – 18-25 years
• 1/3^rd of the respondents are not actually aware of the threat that Social Media sites can pose towards their data
• Half the respondents polled feel that Google will not misuse their data
• Even though people believe that social media sites are not completely safe for financial transactions, they haven’t completely stopped using it either
• 8 out of 10 people feel that the government should intervene for their online data protection
• 8 out of 10 people are also concerned about their Aadhar data security
• The respondents, however, trust the Indian election system and believe that it is not threatened by online security breaches