Do people take actions to protect their online privacy?

In July 2021, the Extended Mind conducted a 1,010 person survey of U.S. participants weighted to the 2019 American Community Survey using age, gender, race, household income and census region. The goal was to assess consumer knowledge about current data practices and protections, as well as to gather consumer preferences around data management for VR and AR (XR) data. Very little research has been done on consumer XR preferences, but because widespread adoption of XR is imminent it’s important to understand people’s preferences in regards to data collection and privacy. This research was funded by Meta Reality Labs.

XR devices come with privacy concerns because their functionality relies on a wide variety of data streams which will include personal and identifiable information. Given this, we wanted to explore how people currently relate to their online privacy. In particular, we sought to gather existing actions on online privacy and what in particular motivated a change to privacy settings.

How do people protect their privacy?

Firstly, our research found that the majority of respondents take active steps to protect their privacy. Eighty-seven percent (n=879) of people reported using at least one online privacy or security service. The most popular products of the options we listed in the survey were Virus Protection Software (57% used), Do not call lists (55% used), and Ad blockers (49% used).

Additionally, 50% (n=505) reported paying for a service they used.

These rates of usage and payment for these services indicate that people are interested in and actively manage their own privacy. People are going out of their way to find, use, and manage these optional services, illustrating the importance of privacy to everyday users.

Thirty-seven percent of (n=374) reported changing their privacy settings in the past three months. Below we’ll discuss what motivated respondents to alter their privacy settings.

Why do people change their privacy settings?

We gave respondents who had changed their privacy settings in the past three months the option to write out their motivation for doing so. Here are some of the reasons they gave:

“I felt unsafe with the previous settings.”

“I was uncomfortable with how much of my privacy they wanted to invade.”

“Likely because it will reduce the abuse and/or use of my privacy.”

The use of words like “unsafe, “invade”, and “abuse” potentially indicate that people feel current default settings are insufficient.

Privacy is something that some people manage habitually, illustrating a desire to be in charge of their data and how its used:

“I change it tri-monthly so people will have a tougher time accessing my information.”

“Just maintenance, making sure everything was up to date.”

These motivations to regularly change settings may be inspired by distrust of companies based on how they feel their data is used, or on news reports.

Additionally, a study performed by researchers at Columbia University indicates that not all settings changes taken by users actually benefit them. Madejski, et al., found that people were not effective in executing their goals with social media privacy setting options, with 94% (n=65) of total participants revealing some information that they wanted to keep private (2011).

More research is needed to better understand to what extent people are actually achieving their goals when they are adjusting their privacy settings. Additionally to build rapport with users, we would recommend that companies test what privacy setting defaults are most desirable and are perceived as most trustworthy to people.

Takeaways

Our research shows that people care about their online privacy and are interested in strengthening that privacy, either through third party services, or device settings.

Narratives about strengthening privacy are often centered around consumer empowerment, such as the California Consumer Privacy Law (CCPA) which seeks to give people more transparency and control over their personal information. That goal is aligned with the 37% of people in our survey who actively manage their privacy settings. However, questions remain about the overall effectiveness of this approach, especially compared to establishing trustworthy defaults.

To download the full report on XR data collection, privacy and more, go to www.extendedmind.io/survey