Kaspersky Analysis Results: Most Users Are Worried About Privacy Security For Platforms On Android

Photo: Kaspersky

JAKARTA - Kaspersky analyzes anonymous data, which is provided voluntarily by Privacy Checker users. This is a website that offers helpful advice on privacy and security instructions for various internet platforms and digital applications.

“Visitor statistics from Privacy Checker show which aspects of online privacy and security attract users the most attention,” said Sergey Malenkovich, Head of Social Media at Kaspersky in an electronic message received in Jakarta, Sunday, August 14.

According to the data, users are most interested in knowing how to set privacy settings for specific services on Android (85 percent). For apps, most requests this year were related to Google's security guidelines (22 percent).

According to the 'Digital Privacy and Security Survey' conducted by the Calyx Institute in 2021, 80 percent of respondents have been more concerned about digital privacy over the past year and 59 percent admit to being more aware of how their data is treated than last year.

Kaspersky analyzes which services and platforms users most frequently ask for security setup instructions, through anonymous data regarding visits to the Kaspersky Privacy Checker website between January 2022 and July 2022.

Based on this data, the demand for privacy guidelines for services on the Android platform is much higher than for other OSes. Windows and iOS got similar results (6%), and the lowest number of requests was recorded for Mac (3 percent).

For the most viewed pages on the site Privacy Checker also confirms the greatest popularity for Android requests, the top five are all related to instructions for this OS.

The highest number of users interested in mid-level privacy settings for Google (17 percent). The next three positions all account for the same number (9 percent), and this is an intermediate privacy rule for Chrome and WhatsApp, as well as the strictest guidelines for Google. Fifth is a mid-level security instruction for Facebook (7 percent).

For service settings, users were most interested in the guidelines for Google (22 percent), WhatsApp (14 percent), operating system privacy rules and Chrome (12 percent each). Instagram (11 percent) closed the top five, slightly outperforming Facebook this year in terms of number of requests with its share of 10 percent.

In addition, Privacy Checker also finds users can choose from three different levels of security settings - strict, medium, and light. This year for all services, the largest share of demand is related to mid-level instruction. The exception was for the Safari browser, where users were more interested in the most stringent privacy rules 54 percent versus 45 percent for medium.

"This year Instagram topped Facebook and TikTok, which is quite surprising given the amount of scrutiny TikTok is still receiving from the public and authorities," Malenkovich said.

According to him, this may have something to do with the 'terms of service' updates made during this year, and users want to make sure that their personal data is safe, no matter what.