FRA: Fundamental Rights Survey - technology and data protection

Jul 22, 2020

FRA has published the first parts of its Fundamental Rights Survey. The survey offers comprehensive data on people’s experiences and opinions concerning their fundamental rights in different areas of life. The information was collected between January and October 2019 and the results are based on the answers of 35.000 Europeans from all EU countries (incl. Finland), The United Kingdom and North Macedonia.

The second published thematic survey Your rights matter: Data protection and privacy covers selected results relating to technology and data protection. The survey focuses on two main aspects: the way and willingness of people to share data about themselves, and their awareness about the EU data protection legal framework. Some of the main results of the survey are, that:

41% do not want to share any personal data with private companies, almost double the number compared to public bodies;
only around 5% want to share their facial images or fingerprints with private companies;
72% know the privacy settings on their smart phones. But 24% do not know how to check the privacy settings on their apps;
55% fear criminals or fraudsters accessing their personal data. Around 30% worry about advertisers, businesses and foreign governments’ access to information without them knowing;
33% do not read the terms and conditions when using online services compared with 22% who always read them;
69% know about the GDPR. A similar number know their national data protection supervisory authority (71%);
only 51% are aware that they can access their personal data held by companies.

The link above is a direct link to the survey. For additional information, see https://fra.europa.eu/en/news/2020/how-concerned-are-europeans-about-their-personal-data-online