New Survey Shows Mobile Users Concerned About Privacy

According to Janet Jaiswal, product manager and blogger for TRUSTe:

The survey, conducted in February, 2011, revealed a strikingly high level of concern around personal information and data privacy, with security fears ranking second on the list of smartphone users’ concerns.

Interestingly, the top-ranked concern was privacy, at 38% of consumers, versus 26% for second-ranked security. The third-ranked choice, scoring 14%, was “sharing,” which might be construed as a variant of privacy. One can quibble, perhaps, about the semantic similarity among the choices offered in some questions on this survey, but the overarching theme is clear. Consumer concern is becoming evident. Among TRUSTe’s other findings:

“Cautious consumers engaged in risk-avoidance behaviors such as never accessing sensitive information from their phones. This kind of “better safe than sorry” approach limits the full potential and usage of mobile sites and apps.”

In light of all the recent press about location tracking and several big, new privacy breaches, one can only imagine that levels of individual concern have risen since the survey date. The link below connects to TRUSTe’s blog, but readers will find embedded there a link to the actual report, containing data that will be useful to anyone servicing customers via mobile channels.

Click here to read more: http://www.truste.com/blog/?p=1456