Privacy concerns are pushing people to change their behavior online, according to an international poll published yesterday that found one in three avoid specific search terms or Web pages to elude tracking.
More than seven in 10 respondents to a survey of almost 10,000 people in nine countries said they were worried about how tech firms collected and used their personal data.
About half said they feared their online activity could reveal intimate information about their lives, according to the survey by rights group Amnesty International, which advocates for stronger rules on data protection.
“A clear majority of people are worried about the power Big Tech has over their lives,” said Tanya O’Carroll, director of Amnesty Tech, in a statement.
The Internet Association, a trade group representing tech firms, including Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Once seen as engines of growth and innovation, tech giants face accusations on both sides of the Atlantic of misusing their power and failing to protect users.
Social media companies have come under increased scrutiny on data privacy issues, fueled by last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal in which tens of millions of Facebook profiles were harvested without their users’ consent.
About half of those interviewed said they have since become more cautious about sharing online personal information such as age, gender and sexual orientation.
More than 30 percent said they now used digital tools to limit online tracking.
The survey, conducted online in late October by British pollster YouGov in countries including Brazil, India and the US, did not say what terms people avoided.
Privacy groups have warned against using words that could identify users, potentially exposing them to identity theft, such as names, addresses and credit card numbers.
“People and authorities are waking up to the impact of data collection,” online privacy expert Paul-Olivier Dehaye said in an e-mail.
In March, Google and Facebook said they were making changes to boost user privacy.
Leaders at both companies have said they take steps to protect user data while using it to help keep their services free or low-cost for billions of people.
Yet almost three in four respondents to the survey said governments should do more to regulate the tech sector.
“People want to see an end to tech companies trampling over our right to privacy,” O’Carroll said.
However, Edin Omanovic, advocacy director at London-based group Privacy International, said new laws were not always the answer.
“In many cases the regulations are already there, the problem is they are just not enforced,” he said.
Of the nine countries surveyed, only Egypt has no specific data protection law, the French data watchdog CNIL said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy