PROJECT AIM
Determine how aware internet users are of how an online platform collects their personal data, what kinds of data are harvested and what it is used for?
WHAT DO YOU USE AS A PRIMARY SEARCH ENGINE?
As you can see from this chart that a staggering 91.3% of respondents use Google as their primary search engine,making Google a monopoly as a data collection organisation. The respondents that did not use google used DuckDuckGo instead which is a search engine that does not store personal data, suggesting that these individuals had higher awareness of online data collection practices.
HOW OFTEN DO YOU READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF A SITE BEFORE CLICKING AGREE?
Here we can see that there is a very large percentage of respondents that have never or very rarely check the terms and conditions of sites before using them. These T&C's can often include terms about data collection which these people will be unaware of.
WHAT TOOLS FOR LIMITING ONLINE PERSONAL DATA COLLECTION DO YOU USE?
The results for this question show that almost half of respondents do not currently use any kind of tools for limiting the collection of their personal data online.
WOULD YOU BE MORE OR LESS LIKELY TO USE TOOLS FOR PROTECTING YOUR ONLINE PERSONAL DATA IF YOU BETTER UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR DATA WAS BEING USED FOR?
A majority of respondents said they would be much or somewhat more likely to use tools that limit their data from being collected online if they better understood what that data was being used for. This suggests that there is a distinct lack of awareness of what people's data is used for and that they
the_more_they_know
Based on the research I conducted for this project, I was able to identify a need for platforms to inform and educate general internet users about online data collection practices. Hence I produced this website to provide a concise overview of the big data industry, giving users a general idea of what kinds of information the most popular online services will collect on you, and simple ways of maintaining your online privacy.
SUMMARY OF PROJECT
To summarise my live project, I believe the project ran smoothly and I managed to stick fairly consistently to timeline. I have been very pleased with my findings from both the online survey plus the review of academic literature that seem to indicate that more efforts need to be made to inform internet users of online data collection practices.
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Acting upon these research findings I was able to focus efforts into the creation of the site that should serve as an education tool to improve user awareness of online data collection practices.
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You can view my dissertation relating to this project by clicking the button below.