A recent study revealed that 60% of consumers believe that their personal data is routinely misused by companies and that 68% are concerned about the amount of data collected. While data is so valuable many consider it the “new oil”, for the people to whom the data belongs, there’s a lot of concern about their private information being turned into a commodity.
This has put data privacy firmly in the spotlight. A growing number of people are now focusing on their ability to have autonomy over when and how they share their data and to what extent their personal information is shared with or communicated to others.
To find out what the global consensus is on data privacy, what aspects of data privacy are considered most important, and what the preferred best practices are, we assessed data from 1,351,203 people worldwide. The data is based on respondents’ engagement on social media platforms, and it covers twelve months, ending on July 6th, 2024.
Bonus Material: Download Data Privacy Statistics Worldwide for 2024
Here’s how over one million people globally feel about data privacy in 2024.
Key Findings
- Data privacy most important for avoiding data breaches
- Over 22% say strong passwords are fundamental data security best practices
- Global data privacy statistics reveal consumer sentiments & risk concerns
- Over a quarter of respondents considering data privacy important are 65 and older
- Over 65% of respondents are US-based
- Women just over 10% more interested in data privacy than men
- Nearly 50% of respondents earn between $200,000 and $500,000
- Privacy an ongoing concern in the digital era
- About The Data
Data Privacy Most Important for Avoiding Data Breaches
Data privacy plays many roles in protecting the use of personal information. We’ve unpacked the engagement levels in the graph below to see what respondents rate as most important.
What was deemed most important?
A Pew Research study revealed that in the last year, 26% of Americans had fraudulent charges on their bank cards, 11% had their social media or email accounts hijacked, and 7% had someone attempt to secure a loan or credit in their name. With so many people having suffered due to a data breach, it’s understandable that 42.7% of the respondents in our survey said that data privacy was essential to avoid data breaches.
The second most important was protecting personal information, at 15.4%, followed by safeguarding sensitive information at 14.8%. The four reasons people cited for the importance of data privacy were separated by around 2% each, with complying with privacy regulations getting 8.2% engagement, protection against surveillance 6.1%, and maintaining confidentiality 4.3%.
The four least important factors had minimal engagement, with building trust with customers getting 3.7% engagement, preserving individual rights 2.5%, preventing identity theft 1.4%, and preventing unauthorised access 0.9%. With a collective 44% of US citizens affected by data breaches, it is surprising that only 1.4% cited preventing identity theft as a reason why data privacy is important. However, without a breach, their data would have remained safe.
Over 22% say strong passwords are fundamental data security best practices
When it comes to data privacy best practices, there were ten different fundamentals that the 1.3+ million survey respondents focused on. We’ve delved deeper into what the graph below reveals.
10 Privacy Fundamentals
From TrendMicro to Norton and Kaspersky, every security solutions provider online cites weak passwords as one of the primary reasons for data breaches. Kaspersky further confirms that weak credentials cause the vast majority of data breaches. If those with malicious intent have your password or username, or both, they have open access to your information.
It’s understandable then that 22.6% of respondents cite strong and unique passwords as the most fundamental best practice for data privacy. 18.7% said that being updated when data or security breaches occurred was the best practice (as this would, assumedly, then allow them to take action to protect themselves), and 16.9% cited phishing and scam email vigilance.
11.5% of respondents agree that two-factor authentication was the best practice, and 8.5% said that social media privacy reviews were most fundamental to data security. Considering the large volumes of personal information shared on social media, this is relatively low. But what’s perhaps even more surprising is that only 7.5% of respondents said that data encryption was the best practice. However, when you consider that recent reports show that only 50% of companies globally use encryption to protect sensitive data, this best practice doesn’t appear to be as much of a priority as other fundamentals.
Using a VPN (5.9%), running regular backups (4.6%), and doing regular software updates (2.8%) all garnered low engagement levels, and only 1% of respondents believed that limiting sharing personal information online was the most fundamental best practice.
Global data privacy statistics reveal consumer sentiments & risk concerns
Organisations use data for everything from making business decisions to guiding marketing campaigns. Theoretically, personal data should only be used for its supplied purpose, and only with owner consent.
However, a vast number of businesses have utilised personal data for targeted marketing purposes and have sold it to third parties, often without permission. This is just one of the reasons the topic of data privacy has become so prevalent, and so many steps have been taken to regulate it.
Considering that 44% of data breaches include personal customer information such as name, email, and password, and hackers attack computers with internet access every 39 seconds, the safety risks of sharing data are enormous, too.
Consumers are clearly concerned about their use of data online, with 46% of customers saying they feel they have lost control over how their personal information is used. 87% of users want the ability to manage how their data is collected and where it is used, and 76% believe companies must do more to protect them.
Studies show that 81% of users say that the possible risks they face when supplying personal data far outweigh any potential benefits, and 37% have ended relationships with a business or service provider over the use of their personal information. Additionally, 48% of consumers have stopped shopping with a specific entity due to privacy concerns.
The way a business treats personal data also makes a difference, with 82% of users saying that how their data is treated reflects how a company treats them as a customer. In contrast, only 5% have no real concerns over how their data is utilised by an organisation. Many businesses seem to recognise this, with a survey from Termly showing that 91.1% of companies are willing to make data privacy a priority if it would directly improve customer loyalty and trust.
Download Data Privacy Statistics Worldwide for 2024
Over a quarter of respondents considering data privacy important are 65 and older
Looking at the age groups that consider data privacy important, those 45 and older top the list. Here’s what the graph below reveals.
What Age Groups Care About Privacy Most?
Topping the engagement list are those 65 and older (26.9%), followed closely by 55-64-year-olds at 22.3% and 45-54-year-olds (21.6%). Those aged between 35 and 44 are only about half as engaged (10.5%) as their older counterparts, while those between 25 and 34 have the lowest engagement rates of 3.6%. Engagement numbers increase again in the youngest demographic, with those aged 25 and younger recording an engagement rate of 15.1%.
This data conflicts somewhat with Statista’s comprehension of data privacy and cybersecurity report from 2023, which shows that those 65 and older are the least knowledgeable of all age groups, while those 50-64 are the most knowledgeable. However, these statistics are US based only, not global, so this could affect the disparity as many older people are becoming increasingly aware of online scams and other nefarious behaviour.
Where respondents are based
The data surveyed was based on global responses, but the USA certainly had the majority of contributors. Here’s how the regions stacked up.
Geographic Responses
To date, 137 out of 194 countries have put in place or drafted legislation to secure the protection of data and privacy. While the US does not have a blanket law for data privacy like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), state and federal laws do apply.
Data privacy is clearly important in the US, and out of the ten regions surveyed, they top the list with a whopping 65.7% majority. In second place is Australia, more than 50% behind, at just 10.5% engagement, while Canada and the UK have only a 0.5% difference between them. (6.7% and 6.5% respectively).
Germany also had low engagement levels at 4.3%, and France and Italy tied at 2.1%. Mexico barely registered with 1%, and Poland (0.9%) and Spain (0.5%) had extremely minimal engagement.
Women just over 10% more interested in data privacy than men
When assessing the gender distribution in the data, there’s not a major difference between male and female engagement. Let’s take a closer look.
Women vs Men
A Technology Policy Institute (TPI) study found that women value data privacy more than men, and our survey data reflected this too. Yet, the difference between female and male engagement was not extremely high, with a 10.2% gap between the two.
Women were 55.1% more engaged, while men were 44.9%, aligning with the findings of the TPI. The TPI also found that older people value data privacy far more than younger people, which matches the respondent demographics we surveyed.
Nearly 50% of respondents earn between $200,000 and $500,000
The data privacy data covered employees in the under $40,000 to over $1 million income categories. Here’s how the earnings versus engagement levels align.
Earnings
Those earning between $200,000 and $500,000 comprised the highest percentage of survey respondents, at 49.4%. There was a major dip thereafter, with those in the $500,000 and $1 million group accounting for just 17.3% engagement. Following closely behind were 15.4% of earners taking home $120,000 to $200,000. At less than half the engagement levels were those earning $80,000 to $120,000 (7.1%), followed by 5.2% earning between $40,000 to $80,000 and 3.8% earning under $40,000. The lowest of all income engagement rates were those earning over a million, at just 1.8%.
While data breaches cost companies $4.45 million globally in 2023, this doesn’t affect a specific income group, and it’s evidently not much of a concern for those earning the highest salaries.
Privacy an ongoing concern in the digital era
Looking at the responses from over 1.3 million people, there are some interesting trends in data privacy worldwide. This is a topic that certain people are very aware of, while others in various countries and age groups are not hugely engaged with.
However, as so many countries have already put laws into place to protect data privacy, and many more are working on doing the same, action is being taken at a higher level, which is hugely positive. This will likely raise awareness, too, as a growing number of people become aware of the autonomy and control they have over the use and storage of their personal information.
About This Research
The data used to determine the 2024 statistics is based on the responses of 1,351,203 people on social media platforms such as X (previously Twitter), TikTok, and Reddit. The responses cover a 12-month period that ended on July 6th, 2024, and were collected and analyzed to produce outcomes within a 90% confidence interval and 5% margin of error. The engagement estimated the number of people participating in the study worldwide.
The demographics were determined using multiple factors, including name, location, and self-disclosed description. Privacy was preserved using k-anonymity and differential privacy. The survey results are based on what people describe online—the questions are not posed to a sample group.
