UK Says Social Media ‘Least Trustworthy’ with Data Protection

Wrapping up this week’s series on the GDPR, today we give a cross-industry perspective on the trust that consumers place in companies to handle their data, and how this varies significantly by sector.

Across the five different areas that we asked about, it’s online banks/payment services and online shopping/retail services which have earned the most trust – around 2 in 3 consumers have faith in them to handle their data, a reflection of how much work companies in this space have done to secure and protect financial data.

Interestingly, music and video streaming services also have a strong degree of trust from UK consumers here, perhaps due to less concern being attributed to data relating to listening habits or watching preferences within the realm of entertainment.

Just over half say they would trust search engines and email services, with the inherently private nature of emails and an awareness of cases of email scanning to help target ads possibly having an impact here.

Finally – and no doubt influenced by recent high-profile media coverage – social networks are the least trusted. Less than 1 in 2 trust them to handle personal data, with just 8% saying that they trust them completely.