(28 July 2015) In a press conference today, a survey of public attitudes on personal data privacy (the "Survey") commissioned by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (the "PCPD") revealed that awareness of privacy rights of individuals and public trust in the PCPD were generally high.
2. The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Mr Allan Chiang said, "Today privacy and data protection have become priority issues on both the social agenda as well as the top management agenda of many organisations. To enable the PCPD to make informed decisions on strategies, educational and promotional plans in future, it is important for us to ascertain public attitudes on privacy and data protection. For example, we found in the survey that many people sacrificed their personal data too readily for convenience. Also, only a small minority of people is prepared to pay $20 a month for email services without advertising. We may need to step up our education work on alerting the man in the street of the adverse consequences of inadequate protection of personal data."
3. The survey results, based on telephone interviews with 1,222 adults and focus group interviews with 36 participants from a diverse background, should benefit not just the PCPD but the community at large.
Awareness of Privacy Rights
4. There is good awareness of the need to balance privacy rights differently in various situations. For the use of personal data made public by public registries, 13-15% of respondents had no concern and 18% had serious concern about the marriage and lands registry. For the ID card number and residential address of a company director, 28-35% had serious concern, supporting that this information is seen as sensitive. 67% of respondents had serious concern and only 1-2% of respondents had no concern as regards provision of their or their friends/relatives names and addresses when applying for a loyalty card, suggesting that this is widely seen as invasion of privacy.
5. Nearly half of respondents had experienced misuse of their personal data in the last 12 months and the most common source of the problem was banks (57%), followed by telecom companies (32%), fitness/beauty centres (26%) and money lenders (17%). Almost 11% of those who experienced misuse had made a complaint, while those who had not complained explained that the major reasons were that friends had provided the information (35%), or they were unwilling to involve the company staff (25%) responsible for the misuse.
6. The Survey revealed that the public could often sacrifice privacy for the sake of convenience. Few respondents were very concerned about providing mobile phone number (even though it allows receiving advertising calls), occupation or full date of birth (even though it is often used for validation).
7. For the notification of data leakage, there is support that the data subjects and the PCPD as well as the media should be notified immediately. This suggests a growing expectation for organisations to measure up and demonstrate to the public their commitment to ensuring privacy and data protection.
Effectiveness of the PCPD
8. The Survey revealed that an overwhelming majority of respondents (86%) agreed or strongly agreed that the PCPD has increased community awareness of personal data privacy issues after the Octopus Incident in 2010.
9. It was generally agreed that naming the organisation at fault in the PCPD’s investigation reports was effective because it raised public awareness. Most interviewees reported that their trust had decreased towards those companies against which the PCPD had reported contraventions of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance.
10. The Survey assessed the perceived trustworthiness of six statutory agencies in handling complaints and identified the PCPD as the second most trusted agency, after the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Expectations for Greater Enforcement Power
11. In general, very few interviewees thought the current regulatory framework was sufficient to protect the public. They were concerned about people being forced to provide personal data and a lot of personal data could be found in the public domain. Most respondents support the PCPD should have greater enforcement powers to regulate mobile apps, direct marketing activities, data breach incidents, etc.
Continuous Challenges from Further Advances in Digitisation
12. When asked whether they were willing to pay HK$20 per month for email services without advertising, only 6% of respondents gave a positive answer, implying that most people are reluctant to pay for privacy protection.
13. Compared to the findings of a privacy awareness survey on Facebook users conducted by the PCPD two years ago, people are now generally more aware of the need for privacy protection on social networks and can act to protect themselves. A strong majority (77%) of Facebook account users interviewed were aware of the privacy setting, of whom nearly all (90%) have changed the settings.
14. An overwhelming majority (87%) of respondents used a smartphone of whom 95% had an instant messaging app installed. 72% of these respondents were aware that the app accesses all contact information on their smartphones and a significant proportion (33%) thought the law should prohibit this.
Read the full survey report (with executive summary) online: www.pcpd.org.hk/english/resources_centre/publications/surveys/files/baselinesurvey2014.pdf
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