With the rapid development of mobile Internet, the situation of personal information leakage of consumers is not optimistic. Excessive collection of personal information by mobile apps is a common trend. Consumers have many concerns, but often lack adequate and effective countermeasures, and the protection of personal information and privacy of consumers needs to be strengthened. The Chinese Consumers’ Association released an investigation report on App personal information leakage this morning, and the results are worth paying attention to.
China Consumers association from July 17 to August 13 this year to organize the survey, the survey adopted an online survey, a total of 5,458 valid questionnaires.
Survey results big data
I. The overall situation of personal information leakage is serious. 85.2% of the people have experienced personal information leakage, and 14.8% of the people have not.
Source of chart: China Consumers association (the same below)
Two, after personal information leakage encountered common problems: sales calls or SMS harassment, received fraud calls, received spam. When consumers’ personal information is leaked, about 86.5 percent of respondents have been harassed by sales calls or text messages, about 75 percent have received fraud calls, and about 63.4 percent have received spam, ranking the top three. In addition, some respondents had received illegal information such as illegal links, and some even had their personal account passwords stolen.
Three, consumer personal information two key concerns: to be used to engage in fraud and theft activities and trafficking or exchange to a third party. According to the survey results, 70.5 percent of respondents are most worried about the possibility of mobile apps being used for fraud and theft if personal information is leaked. Selling or exchanging to a third party accounted for 52.4%, being harassed by marketing advertisements accounted for 37.7%, and reputation damage accounted for 6.6%.
Iv. Unauthorized collection of personal information by operators and intentional disclosure of information are the main ways of personal information disclosure. According to the results of the survey, the main way of personal information leakage is that operators collect personal information without their consent, accounting for about 62.2% of the total sample of the survey; Second, operators or lawbreakers deliberately leaked, sold or illegally provided personal information to others, accounting for 60.6% of the total sample, 57.4% of the personal information was leaked due to loopholes in the network service system. Criminals stole and fraudulated personal information through Trojan viruses and phishing websites, and managers collected unnecessary personal information, accounting for 34.4 percent and 26.2 percent, respectively.
Fifth, about one-third of respondents choose to consider themselves unlucky. After the disclosure of personal information, interviewees will take various measures to safeguard their rights and interests, such as complaining to consumer associations and relevant administrative departments, and some interviewees will choose to negotiate and settle with service providers and give feedback to relevant industry organizations. It is worth noting that about one-third of the respondents chose “self-unlucky”, either because they were unable to cope with it or because they accepted the situation after coping with it ineffectively.
Vi. Application permissions and user agreements or privacy policies when installing and using mobile apps. In terms of reading habits, most respondents chose “occasionally reading”. Few users read application permissions, user agreements or privacy policies when installing and using mobile apps, and most users read them occasionally or never. Always read 18.1%, often read 8.2%, sometimes read 16.4%, occasionally read 31.2%, never read 26.2%.
In terms of reading level, most respondents chose “roughly read”. Among 73.8% of the interviewees who have read the application permission and user agreement or privacy policy, only 26.7% of them can read the text description of the application permission and user agreement or privacy policy carefully, less than 30%. Nearly 40% of respondents read the policy briefly, the highest proportion; About 20.0% of respondents will choose to read the key chapter description; In addition, some interviewees occasionally check the application permissions and user agreements or privacy policies.
“You can’t use it if you don’t authorize it” was the top reason respondents “never read.” For 26.2% of the respondents who never read application permissions and user agreements or privacy policies, 61.2% chose never to read them because they could not use them without authorization and had to accept them. In addition, 22.2% of respondents believe that they trust App operators, and 16.6% believe that the content of App user agreements is similar.
7. More than 60% of respondents take measures to fill in part of their personal information to protect their personal information security. Respondents mainly protect personal information security by filling in only part of their personal information when using apps, accounting for 67.2%. In addition, 32.7% chose to close personalized services (such as location), 29.5% refused access to software, 24.6% installed relevant protection software, 18.0% used partial false information when registering, and 4.9% of the respondents said “don’t care”.
Viii. The permissions required by App are mainly to obtain location information and access contacts
According to the survey results, access to location information and access to contacts are the most encountered during APP installation and use, accounting for 86.8% and 62.3% respectively. The respondents were also asked for access to call records (47.5 percent), SMS records (39.3 percent), camera access (39.3 percent), and microphone recording (24.6 percent).
90 percent of respondents believe that mobile apps obtain users’ privacy rights when their functions are unnecessary. The situation that mobile apps obtain users’ privacy rights without their own functions is quite serious, 67.2% of respondents have encountered this situation, and only 32.8% have not encountered this situation.
10. Nearly 80% of respondents believe that the reason mobile apps collect personal information is to promote advertising. Respondents believe that marketing advertising is the most important reason for mobile apps to collect personal information, accounting for 77.0%. Other reasons were selling and exchanging personal information (45.9 percent), mining users’ habits to provide better services (42.6 percent), and fraud and theft (24.6 percent).
11. The main reason for personal information security problems in mobile apps is weak awareness of personal security and inadequate supervision. Weak awareness of personal information security protection and inadequate supervision are the main reasons for personal information security problems of mobile apps, accounting for 64.0% and 57.3%, respectively. Imperfect laws (39.3%), difficulty in obtaining evidence, high cost of safeguarding rights (24.6%), weak awareness of safeguarding rights (19.6%) and lack of industry self-discipline (18.0%) are also important reasons for personal information security problems in mobile apps.
12. More than 80% of respondents believe that current mobile apps need to be strengthened in the protection of users’ personal information. Respondents believe that current mobile apps need to be strengthened in terms of user personal information, with 62.3% believing it is very necessary and 23.0% believing it is necessary, accounting for more than 80% of the total sample of the survey. A relatively small proportion said it was not necessary, not necessary and not necessary at all.
