New Research From India and the United States

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However, more importantly, we found that people did not hold monolithic data philosophies that they applied to all services in their portfolios. One person tends to have several different data privacy philosophies across the different parts of their portfolio. This was consistent across both Indian and American respondents.

Take the example of Catherine, below. She expressed fatalism in describing her data philosophy – i.e. the idea that when one enters the digital world, one gives up any sort of data privacy. However, she applied that viewpoint only to her social media (mostly Facebook) and the news she reads online. And with respect to Facebook, she also expressed that she should take some personal responsibility for her own data protection. But she did not apply that philosophy to her use of Google browser: In that case, she felt that she had “nothing to hide” – i.e., if the search engine is gathering data on the web pages she is looking at, she doesn’t worry. If she had one overriding philosophy about her portfolio, it would be the idea that she would welcome a trade-off – an ability for her to earn italy whatsapp number data financial benefits from the data she’s sharing across her portfolio. These different views on data are highlighted in the graphic below.




Diagram 3: Data philosophies apply to several different parts of the same digital portfolio



The main takeaway from these findings is that the evidence suggests that consumers cannot be segmented based on a single philosophy. We cannot say that Americans tend to hold this type of philosophy while Indians believe that, or that older consumers have one data philosophy versus younger consumers. Rather, consumers need to be understood as having a complete set of individual data philosophies, and these are likely to be different across different types of services.



Do Consumers Really Care About Their Data?
So do consumers in the U.S. and India actually care about how their data is collected and used online? Our short answer is yes: Part of the evidence base we gathered resulted from the fact that consumers were able to speak in a thorough way about their thoughts and feelings in these interviews. This showed that they had already thought through these issues, even if they were missing the full information about what data they were sharing and how it was being put to use.

And when they received further information about the data they were sharing, they were able to share their reactions quickly, and those reactions were never of the basic “I care/don’t care” variety – they were able to articulate nuanced thoughts.

An example is an exercise we did with respondents, who all used at least one Google service. We had them log into Google Takeout, which is a site offered by Google that shows all the data the company keeps on users and allows them to also opt out of this data collection. None of the respondents had been to this site before, although they found it easy to log in and check it during the interview. Their responses were typically in a sequential set, as respondents reacted in concern about how much data was kept, then had a moment of understanding about why they might receive targeted ads, then a generally positive reaction that Google would offer this site, then (again typically) a less concerned attitude than they initially showed about whether they would opt out of data sharing. The graphic below illustrates this progression of responses.