Personal Information Collected Through Digital Tracking – How Much Control Do You Really Have?

With rapid increase in online platforms, individuals worry that their personal data is less secure now. Think about it yourself!

How many apps do you currently use? What about mobile banks and the information it takes to sign-up? Now go back and rethink how many times you had to shop online and share your contact address and number? Now, even spots like local stores and gas stations are supporting contactless payments and online money transfer and most of them require you to share at least a portion of your personal information during the process.

Although all such platforms are keen to put forward privacy policies that ensure that no collected data is used illegally, is it enough to guarantee millions of people that their sensitive information is in safe hands?

A majority of the surveys in the US have pointed out that at least half of the residents worry that their offline life is being tracked due to their online presence. On the other hand, the majority of the companies are of the view that data-driver marketing is important for both, better performance of the company itself as well as for high customer satisfaction levels.

Other than that, users do not entirely disagree nor do they share any resentment that their data was collected without permission. However, the majority of them are concerned as to how this data is utilized later on, what control they have on the information that they provide, and to what extent is it legal to use and store such data.

The Role of Data Providers

Obviously, the data needs to be generated from somewhere. If the community feels unsafe in regards to its privacy,a  simple approach would be to completely disagree with sharing any information on online platforms or elsewhere. Yet 22% of the users agree that they feel safe after going through a well-explained privacy policy on a website and wouldn’t mind sharing non-sensitive data such as name or contact address later on.

In addition to that, some situations are unavoidable. For example, if a person has signed up with a mobile banking app and wants to receive money on an online bank, it is mandatory to share account number details or otherwise money transfers would not be possible at all. In such cases, the data providers are not left with many options on the table.

Lastly, some users are also of the view that the rewards offered by such platforms outweigh the risks that they pose. In fact, 72% participants agree that they have benefitted from company data collection at least once in their lifetime.

The Real Concern is “HOW”

As we mentioned before, customers are not concerned about why they are asked to share personal data but they worry how it would be used later.

79% of the respondents shared that they would feel more comfortable giving out sensitive data if the companies could be transparent about how they plan to utilize it. This shows that most Americans are not confident about the extent to which their personal data is safe and consequently, they are of the view that they have the least control over the data being collected through digital tracking.