European consumers attitudes on privacy

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Deutsch: [Einstellung europäischer Verbraucher zum Datenschutz | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_11.7_Einstellung_europaeischer_Verbraucher_zum_Datenschutz?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20130410]

Some interesting results from a quantitative and qualitative analysis
made by the EU-funded CONSENT project to find out about the consumers’
attitudes awareness of privacy issues online and service providers’
practices were presented at the final conference of the project, that
took place in Malta on 20-21 March 2013.

The results indicate that there is indeed a high variability between
different EU countries in the perception of personal risks, privacy loss
or unexpected problems related to giving personal information to
websites. From an elevated level of perceived control on privacy in
Germany or Austria to the concept of privacy as “little developed” in
Romania, Bulgaria or Slovakia.

There are other results available for the whole EU level that are worth
the attention:

– The correspondence between the awareness levels of website owners’
practices in relation to privacy and the awareness of technical
protection measures

– More than 50% of all respondents indicate that they often or always
change their privacy settings in UGCs and social networks. Four out of
five actually make their privacy settings stricter than the default settings

– Generally, rather low portion of privacy policy readers (24%). Only
11% of readers claim to fully understand the privacy statement or policy
they have read.

Another part of the project also looked at the practices of over 100
European and international social networks and UGCs website. To point
just to one of the realities: Only 38 of those networks analysed
required explicit consent to process personal data for commercial purposes.

But the situation of the European social networks is actually worse,
because their main and powerful competitor (yes, you guessed – Facebook)
seems to be totally disobeying every single EU data protection
requirement, as the practical presentation of Max Schrems from
Europe-v-Facebook clearly emphasized.

The conference also focused on several panels of DPAs or civil society
representatives (including EDRi) that presented their feedback on the
CONSENT draft policy brief that would be available to the policy makers,
especially on the European legislative level by the end of April 2013.

The EDPS, Mr Peter Hustinx, also emphasized that the notion of consent
as a key in the matter of the future of online privacy and definition of
explicit consent needs to be maintained as one of the cornerstones of
the data protection framework. He also showed his optimism for a
positive outcome of the legislative process on the data protection
Regulation, following the vote in the European Parliament Legal Affairs
Committee.

Presenting CONSENT project results I. Consent and Social Networks (5.04.2013)
http://consent.law.muni.cz/view.php?cisloclanku=2013040001

Presenting CONSENT project results II. What Consumers Think (5.04.2013)
http://consent.law.muni.cz/view.php?cisloclanku=2013040002

Europe versus Facebook
http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html

Online privacy – Consenting to your future
http://www.onlineprivacyconference.eu/

EDRi: Parliament Legal Affairs Committee adopts improved position on privacy legislation (19.03.2013)
https://edri.org/juri_eudatap