SURVEY RESULTS & KEY FINDINGS
As you certainly know, Data has surpassed oil as the world's most valuable resource and the enormous amount of data that we all generate every day will play a decisive role in the economy of the future. According to The Value of our Digital Identity, the value of personal data will indeed represent €1 trillion in Europe by 2020, or roughly 8 percent of the combined GDP of the EU-27. Competing for this new data rush gold, platforms ecosystems are indeed buying, trading and selling consumer behavior, social and political orientation, money spending habits, health, lifestyle for online targeted advertising, Internet ad-clicking business models and smart connected devices.
The European Union Agency for Network and Information security -ENISA- stated, in the Value of Personal data report, that the estimated ARPU – Average Revenue per User- mainly controlled by Google and Facebook in digital advertisement has reached $59 per person in 2017. With an average of 3.8 billion active Internet users, they estimate generated profit made by these companies at $224 billion.
B2cloud has conducted in May and June 2018 an independant survey with a panel of european based contributors around the Value of the Data to platforms ecosystems. Not surprisingly, the Facebook and Cambridge analytica incident has increased concerns about privacy.
Indeed, 94, 44% of respondents confirmed to be concerned about the use of their personal data (Fig 1) and confirmed to feel disturbed by the use of their private data for monetization purposes (Fig 2).
Facebook obtained the lowest Global Trust ranking score with 1.94 over 5 -ex aequo with twitter-. (Fig 3). None of the other digital platforms got a Trust score higher than 3, thus revealing a lake of confidence with regard to platforms ecosystems.
This survey also revealed that respondents are equally concerned about privacy and security. Indeed 94% of them are at least using private browsing and private setting and 16.67% are using opt in/opt out mechanisms. Only 5.56% of them never use protecting measures.
Surprisingly only 5.56 % of respondents are usually reading the privacy T&C -terms and conditions- of platforms ecosystems.
The survey also highlighted that respondents are aware of the value of their personal information whether this value is related to private protection or to commercial purposes.
Half of respondents will be willing to pay to access to digital platforms in exchange for the guarantee of non use of their personal data.
Furthermore, 44.45% of respondents will globally accept to share more private data in exchange for financial compensation, regarding the type of information shared and the level of compensation. The majority will never accept to share private data for financial compensation. There was no correlation between the level of completed education and the related knowledge around data privacy and security issues, except for monetization aspect, as it seems that the highest level of completed education are less willing to be paid for private data exchanges.
As key findings, if respondents are aware of the commercial use of their personal information and of the value of their personal information, and if they feel disturbed by the use of their data for monetization purpose, it seems that they would like to be more involved as valued contributors within the community of value. While taking somes ad hoc measures to protect their data, they still not usually read contractual Terms and Conditions when using platforms ecosystems.