Consumers opinion on personal data control worldwide 2021| ��ƽ��

Share of adult consumers worldwide who agree that tech companies have too much control over their personal data as of January 2021

Characteristic	Agree	Neither agree nor disagree	Don't know	Disagree
All adults	66%	21%	7%	6%
Spain	75%	16%	5%	4%
UK	75%	16%	6%	4%
United States	72%	16%	8%	5%
Australia	70%	22%	4%	5%
Mexico	68%	22%	3%	7%
Poland	67%	20%	6%	7%
France	67%	17%	9%	6%
UAE	66%	22%	5%	7%
India	65%	24%	5%	6%
Italy	64%	21%	8%	7%
Germany	63%	19%	10%	7%
Singapore	63%	27%	6%	4%
Hong Kong	58%	31%	5%	7%
Denmark	57%	20%	16%	7%
Indonesia	56%	26%	10%	8%
China	56%	32%	7%	6%
Sweden	54%	23%	14%	9%

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Source

Release date

March 2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

January 2021

Age group

18 years and older

Special properties

data covering 17 key geographic markets

Supplementary notes

The survey question was phrased by the source as follows: "Please state your level of agreement with the following: 'When it comes to my data, I feel like tech companies have too much control'"

Sample sizes for each represented market were between 505 and 2029.

All data is nationally representative except for data from Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India, where data is representative of the urban population.

The values may not sum up to 100 percent due to rounding.

Citation formats

According to a January 2021 survey of adults worldwide, 66 percent of total respondents agreed on feeling that tech companies hold too much control over their personal data, while only six percent expressed disagreement with the statement. Consumers based in Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States reported higher levels of concern over data control, with more than seven in ten people feeling that tech companies have too much control over their personal information. While surveyed consumers in Sweden, China, and Indonesia appeared to agree the least with the statement, still more than five in ten reported feeling that tech companies have too much control over their data.

Questionable ethics and security breaches put tech companies under scrutiny

Tech giants, and big tech in particular have been under focus in recent years when it comes to data privacy and consumer-related ethics. While Google has been recipient of not one, but a number of antitrust fines from the EU dating back to 2017, tech giant Yahoo fell victim to various data breaches that resulted in the exposure of 3 billion consumer records in total to date.

User skepticism is growing

No wonder public trust has faltered. The rise of ad-blockers, VPNs and privacy search engines show that consumers are more eager than ever to protect their data online. In the United States, alternative search engine DuckDuckGo saw a surge in popularity from April 2020 - around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, over half of those surveyed in the UK said that the public exposure of recent data breaches had impacted their willingness to share personal information. The global pandemic has also hit the tech industry, with companies in the tourism sector taking the biggest blow. Booking.com laid off the highest number of employees during 2020, a total of 4375 members of staff.