Czechs are the most distrustful nation in Europe — or perhaps the wisest — when it comes to sharing their data, according to an international survey by the EOS KSI agency. They protect their health data the most and, compared to other European countries, are more reserved about sharing their location, GPS, and movement data.
Contact data (44 percent) is one type of data that Czechs are more willing to share with businesses, services, and applications. Almost two-fifths provide their personal information to third parties. The third most commonly shared item is data on shopping behavior and popularity of certain products or brands (37 percent). Only 27 percent of people share location, GPS, and motion data with third parties. Only 10 percent of Czechs share their health data.
“Data is, of course, a valuable commercial tool. However, they can often help rescue services to determine the location of the endangered or in contact with an infected person, for example. In addition, sharing financial data can enable companies to better assist indebted clients with loan repayments, as is the case in our sector. Caution is certainly commendable, but people should know the point where secrecy can be detrimental to themselves,“ said Vladimír Vachel from EOS KSI.
According to him, the paradox is that 61 percent of Czechs do not have a bad experience with sharing data with third parties, or at least, they do not know about any adverse effects it may have had on their lives. Czech consumers are not significantly skeptical about companies and data sharing. They are even less skeptical than the European average. This approach confirms another inconsistency in Internet behavior. For example, a quarter of respondents do not adjust the settings of cookies on individual websites and automatically give their consent.
“Cookies are a nice example, they make it easier to personalize the website, thanks to which the website knows what settings the user chose during the last visit or what personal data he should pre-fill in the form. We allow the web browser to know relatively a lot about ourselves,“ said Vachel, adding that the results of the survey show that digital trust and literacy in data sharing need to be built strongly.
According to him, it is also important to fight the misinformation surrounding data misuse and the benefits of digitization. The great responsibility of education lies precisely on the part of companies.
The international EOS study was conducted in collaboration with Kantar in the first half of 2020 on a representative sample in 17 countries. A sample of 1,000 respondents from Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Croatia, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom and 300 respondents from Northern Macedonia were evaluated.
