What websites do you visit? How long do you spend on a website? Where are you visiting a website from? With the wealth of data that companies have these days, they know all the answers. This enables companies to send you increasingly personalised adverts. “By combining data, it is even possible to predict what things you would like in the future, even when you do not know this yourself,” says Iris van Ooijen, assistant professor of Communication Science at Radboud University.
There are lots of people who are concerned about the pressure on our online privacy. Yet not everyone protects their online data by, for example, setting up an adblocker or blocking cookies. Van Ooijen: “When looking for an explanation for this paradox, we researched the effect of the so-called privacy cynicism: a feeling of despondency and frustration where people think that they have so little control of their data that trying to protect it is an impossible task.”
No longer manageable
Van Ooijen and her colleagues conducted a large survey of nearly 1,000 people in the United States. They were asked their views about privacy and to what degree they protect themselves. The degree to which people protect themselves depends on two factors: the perceived severity of the threat and the options that people think they have to protect themselves. “In privacy-cynical people, we observed that an increase in the perceived severity of the threat does not have an effect, and that they also do not protect themselves when presented with options to do so.”
The privacy cynicism is accompanied by a feeling of having less control over their data. “People can no longer manage it and trying to protect yourself feels like a futile exercise.” The consequence is that people do not protect themselves at all, which means that companies can get data even more easily.
Signal to businesses and government
Van Ooijen can understand this reaction. “I also see that the pressure is increasing. Indeed, it takes more and more effort to protect oneself completely and to participate in society without obstacles. Take a communication app such as WhatsApp that collects all sorts of personal information. Of course, there are alternative communication apps, but as the vast majority of people use WhatsApp, not doing so can make communication a lot harder.” Van Ooijen also emphasizes that privacy cynicism does not happen overnight. “It is a chronic attitude that is formed over a longer period of time. It also takes longer to get rid of that attitude.”
What can we do to prevent the pressure on our online privacy from becoming too much? “This research shows that people definitely find their privacy important, but that they often feel powerless when it comes to implementing this in their online behaviour. This could be a signal for the government to toughen privacy legislation. It also sends a signal to commercial businesses who are collecting data in abundance. “Despite privacy cynicism people will not just go along with everything. For example, many people cancelled their accounts when it became public how a company like Facebook handles privacy data. This will force businesses to handle data more carefully or at least to be honest and transparent about what they do with our data.”