Privacy, 64% of users have lost faith in digital companies

According to the latest report released by OpSec on the consumption habits barometer which involved 2,600 users worldwide, in 2020 64% of customers who have suffered a breach of their personal data say they have lost faith in the brand from which they had bought. , while 28% of these say they no longer want to shop from that company.

To raise the phenomenon, and the possible repercussions on the digital economy, is Nicola Bernardi, president of Federprivacy, an association that has also published a circular specification on transparency with the GDPR:

“With the numerous pitfalls encountered online, the user is treated more like a chicken to be plucked than a potential customer to be loyal, and not only the privacy of the interested parties is involved, but also virtuous companies that due to the general lack of transparency, they are affected by the loss of trust of users “.

According to the Federprivacy observatory, one of the main causes of the growing mistrust of the digital market is the lack of transparency of websites and apps, which often resort to various expedients and so-called “dark patterns” to induce users to give up their privacy.

Among the most common phenomena that weigh on the decline in trust on the internet, there is the excessive length and complexity of the privacy information that users are unable to understand well and read in full, such as those of Google and Facebook, both about 7,000 words with a reading time of more than half an hour, and that of Zoom 10,000 words, which takes 45 minutes.

To fuel the skepticism on the web are also the deceptive slogans of the banners on the cookies of sites and apps that require consent for privacy, but which in reality prove to be a stratagem to obtain authorization to monitor the user’s online behavior to profile it. and offer him advertising based on his preferences and consumption habits.

Pop-ups also proliferate that give the user no escape, such as the one recently used by Twitter which offers the only two options to “activate personalized ads” or to receive “less relevant ads”, without being able to completely refuse targeted advertising.

Furthermore, in many cases the exercise of the right to cancellation provided by the GDPR is a real obstacle course, as in the case of Amazon, where to cancel their account the user must go through 12 steps made of drop-down menus and disorienting warnings that often cause the user to desist.