Brits hate how big tech handles their data, but can't be bothered to do much about it

Fewer than one in five Brits report being happy with the way their personal data is handled by big tech companies, yet the furthest many will go is to reject optional cookies on the web.

A little more than 60 percent of the 5,000 or so respondents to the UK government's Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) survey say they rejected optional cookies when asked what measures they had taken to control their data.

It's hardly a surprising finding, given that the presence of cookies on every website, seemingly every time you visit, is difficult to ignore. Perhaps the fact that around 40 percent of people never declined the optional cookies at least once is the more shocking finding.

Deleting cookies from a browser is the next most common step with half of respondents doing so, closely followed by 44.4 percent bothering to change their privacy settings.

Around a third (32 percent) actually read the T&Cs of a service they use, while one in five (19.8 percent) abandoned at least one service over personal data concerns. Roughly one in six (17.2 percent) say they did nothing at all.

The most common reason for taking no action was down to simply not knowing how to take control of one's data online. Nearly one in three (32 percent) cite this as the main reason, although this figure did rise with the respondents' ages.

In the presumably more tech-literate 18-29 demographic, only 14 percent say ignorance was the reason, while in the 60-69 and 70+ brackets, this wwent up to 48.1 and 45.8 percent respectively.

So, what's the youngsters' excuse? There is a fairly even split across three reasons. Taking too much time or effort is up there with 22.7 percent of the vote. The matter simply not occurring to them is cited by 19.7 percent, but the primary reason for young people not acting on their data privacy is that they are quite content with their current level of security (26.8 percent).

Those in the middle-age brackets just did not have enough time or energy, and it hasn't crossed their minds, or so they told the DSIT.

With just 19.3 percent of Brits saying they're either strongly or somewhat satisfied with how their data is handled by big tech, the stats reveal a notable degree of apathy toward taking action, or even thinking it's possible.

It suggests the options available to Brits perhaps need to be more obvious and easily accessible. Clearly our readers are not among those quizzed in the poll.

The proportion of people saying they took no action regarding the use of their personal data, and the resulting section of those who didn't even think about acting, raises questions about how well-publicized the issues are.

• Campaigners claim 'Privacy Preserving Attribution' in Firefox does the opposite
• Who's watching you the closest online? Google, duh
• Chrome adopts app-bound encryption to stymie cookie-stealing malware
• W3C says Google's cookie climbdown 'undermines' a lot of work

Here at The Reg, we like to think we do a decent job of putting tech companies with bad data practices to the sword, and in recent years the topic has certainly farther than just the tech press.

With everything from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the increasing number of ransomware attacks affecting everyday life in the UK, plus the bevy of movies and documentaries covering the pervasive issues at play, and everything in between, there is no shortage of information out there.

That said, there will always be those who take no action unless they know something directly affects them negatively, and for the most part personal data mishaps don't lead to catastrophic consequences.

It's almost unheard of for data stolen in ransomware attacks to directly lead to issues such as identity theft or credit card abuse, for example, despite the high volume of such data often making its way into the hands of attackers. Of course, general laziness will also always be a factor.

Various research shows that the average Joe's attitude toward sharing data is becoming more relaxed in Britain over the past ten years.

The Data and Marketing Association arrived at that very conclusion in 2022, two years after Deloitte published similar findings. The latter found that between 2018 and 2020 – the first two years of the GDPR – consumers reporting concerns over data protection halved to 24 percent. ®