Brits willing to pay out more for watertight data privacy

Nearly half (49%) of UK consumers claim they would be willing to pay more to do business with an organisation that is committed to protecting their data privacy even though such commitments are already enshrined in law.

New research, derived from a survey of 2,000 Brits carried out by OpenText, highlights consumer uncertainty and continuing distrust around how organisations handle their data, despite the introduction of GDPR and the UK Data Protection Act in 2018.

One of the key issues appears to be that the vast majority (80%) of UK consumers “don’t have a clue” about how many organisations actually use, store or have access to their personal data, including their email addresses, contact numbers and bank details.

However, awareness of GDPR is high, with almost half (48%) saying they know there laws to protect their personal data and an additional third (36%) confirm they have at least some understanding of these regulations.

In fact, almost a third (32%) say they would proactively get in touch with an organisation to see how it is using their personal data or to check if it is storing their personal data in a compliant manner; than one in ten (13%) have already done so at least once.

The study also shows that almost three-quarters (73%) of Brits feel they know how to keep their own data private and secure on apps, email accounts and social media platforms, from using privacy settings to turning off geolocation. Yet one in ten (11%) believes keeping their data private and secure on apps, email accounts and social media is the responsibility of the app or company in question.

Rather worryingly, only 9% believe we are at the point when every business is meeting its legal obligations to keep customer data private. In fact, almost a quarter (24%) either see this as a distant future or believe it will never happen.

OpenText senior vice president and chief marketing officer Lou Blatt said: “The Covid crisis has accelerated the pace of digital transformation, as companies have moved to remote work and digital customer experiences. Digital is now central to almost every business interaction – generating more data for companies to manage and secure. This shift coupled with increased consumer data privacy expectations means organisations are now under pressure to ensure that their data privacy solutions can scale appropriately for this digital-first era.”