There is an experiment held at MIT in which students were asked for the details of their closest friends. Half of the students were given a little incentive in the form of an order of pizza to share with friends and 98% of those shared emails. Some students 94% gave up friends’ email addresses when not given any incentives. In the non-incentivized group, 6% gave fake emails to protect their friends’ names. Not giving an email address was also not a choice.
This isn’t the first time a difference separating the beliefs surrounding privacy protections and the effects upholding them has been shown. More people than ever are susceptive to hacking and yet they routinely put their online privacy at risk by doing things like using public Wi-Fi or using weak passwords.
In fact, only 12% of internet users use any kind of password manager like LastPass or 1Password, which save complex passwords on a digital keychain to help users login securely, according to a report from security provider SplashData. Roughly two-thirds of respondents said they rely rather on memorizing easy passwords. Passwords “123456” and “password” topped the list of emails and passwords most often cracked by hackers for the second year in a row.
The latest study has a plenty of implications, researchers concluded, particularly in the field of privacy policies and consent. Christian Catalini, an author on the study, said the results show people either emphasize how much they care about privacy when asked in surveys or else that they do care about privacy but make pressured decisions online without considering future outcomes.
“If the second conclusion is true, then it becomes necessary to rethink how ’consent’ is given in all these applications, mostly to make sure that users are actually making a choice consistent with their decisions,” he said. “As more of our lives are becoming digital, making sure we have control over how and if our data is used will become more important over time.”
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