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More Users Trust Amazon and Google to Handle Their Personal User Data Than Apple, Survey Suggests

MacRumors said:


According to a new survey, more users trust Amazon and Google to handle their personal user data and internet browsing activity than Apple, while users overwhelmingly distrust Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

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The survey conducted by The Washington Post sampled over 1,000 internet users in the U.S. about how much they trust Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon to "responsibly" handle their user data and browsing activity.

Users were polled on whether they trust the companies and platforms "a great deal," "a good amount," "not much," or "not at all," with users also able to state they had no opinion of a given company.

Among respondents, 18% said they trust Apple "a great deal," while Google and Amazon scored 14%. But in the "a good amount" category, Amazon took the lead with 39%, Google with 34%, and Apple trailing with 26%. Combining the two positive categories, Apple's overall net positive score was 44%, lagging behind Google's 48% and Amazon's 53%.

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On the negative side, survey data indicated that out of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, 40% of those surveyed said they don't trust Facebook at all to handle their user data. Facebook took the crown for being the least trustworthy out of all those listed. A separate survey last week revealed a similar sentiment amongst users, naming Facebook, now known as Meta, as the worst company of 2021.

Apple tied Amazon for the best net negative score at 40%, with Microsoft coming in at 42% and Google at 47%.

Internet users were also asked about targeted online advertising, with 82% saying they find targeted online ads annoying, 74% finding them invasive, and only 27% finding them helpful. One of Apple's most controversial and talked-about privacy measures introduced in recent years is App Tracking Transparency, which indirectly aims to limit the annoying and invasive ads seemingly disliked by most users.

App Tracking Transparency (ATT) requires apps to ask for users' consent before tracking them across other apps and websites. For users opted out of the tracking, apps and data brokers such as Facebook have fewer data points to show users targeted advertising online. Facebook has lobbied against ATT, calling it harmful to small businesses that rely on ads to keep afloat.

Article Link: More Users Trust Amazon and Google to Handle Their Personal User Data Than Apple, Survey Suggests
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This survey is simply an extension of media coverage of tech and has little to do with actual privacy policies or intention by any of these companies. For example, Facebook is ranked the worst because of stories about Cambridge Analytica told all of us that the elections could be manipulated by abusing our privacy through Facebook. TikTok is ranked 2nd because Trump tried to force it to be sold to a US company claiming that China could spy on all of us.

And all the way toward the bottom we have Apple who is always in the headlines with a new privacy story. They are trusted more than most but since we carry so much personal data on our phones, people are anxious because of the headlines involving the FBI, terrorists, child porn, etc. Finally we have Amazon who shouldn't be trusted nearly as much as they are because they are not involved in many privacy headlines and deliver all your Christmas gifts for you so they are trusted with public data like your home address and don't offer a phone that could potentially spy and track our whereabouts.
 
Not really surprising, I'm willing to bet there very few who participated in the survey are tech savvy or hang around on these forums.

And most people simply don't care and will give up their data for the sake of convenience.
 
I feel like this stuff has gotten so far out of hand that I don’t even trust this polling to define the word Trust the same as me. Can we agree on what term means and then go from there?
 
4jasontv said:
Here is a possible explanation. Two companies have different privacy policies. Company A says we scan your data and use it for targeted marketing. Company B says we don’t scan your data. You are now asked which company you trust more. If you assume all companies scan your data you will likely say A because they admitted it, while B might be but you don’t know. So it’s not a measure of trusting what they do with it but rather trust that they do what they say they are doing.

To me this survey was unclear as to what they were exactly trying to measure.
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The backlash and legal liability it would open Apple to if one of the worlds richest consumer focused companies lied at this scale would be biblical. I treat companies from a legal point of view - i.e. liability. I think the probability is far more likely to trust the giant company that says 'hey we are selling privacy and don't make money from selling your data' which is obvious from their quarterly earnings vs company that says, hey we are selling your data and here's how much we made by doing that.

I don't treat companies at face value, I treat companies by what's in their best financial interest. Selling privacy allows Apple to club Google/Facebook/Amazon over the head so to speak.
 
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I remember calling into Apple Support, and them asking me, "do you mind if I start a screen share with you?" I said, "On my iPhone?" They say, "Yes. I'm just going to send you a push notification. Please press Accept."

This was all it took for me to confirm to myself how entrenched the backdoor is. What on Earth did that silly little "Accept" dialog implementation have to do with their ability to surveil me in a moment's notice? I think a lot of people have cognitive dissonance when it comes to their privacy if they believe the smokescreen that "privacy is important to Big Tech." If it's not enumerated in a constitution, the right doesn't exist, and the worst is probably already happening.

I've been convinced that Apple is a multilayered NSA project, an arm of a shadow (privatized) government, for a very long time. But one tactic of denial and trained skepticism is to say, "Prove it." to the increasing signs of technology dystopia that ought to naturally point us much closer to "YOU prove it's NOT happening based on the technology already existing instead of requiring me to prove that it is happening without access to do so." The nature of this stuff is that it's all hidden and secretive. Why should we take that as responsible and benevolent simply because the MARKETING tells us to? The speculative question should not be, "could it be?" but rather "if it were, how would it be?"

If something is possible, no one should be so blindly foolish as to believe that the technology is not in use. In what instance could a whistleblower come forward if they knew that their every last motion and use of their technology was tracked down to the micron of their own movement? At that point, it would be, "Succumb or die."
 
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Dwalls90 said:
Considering the amount of people that get their news from Facebook, is this surprising to anyone?
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True,
You could also add YouTube, Instagram, etc. to that list. If you like using them, you're going to regardless until sufficient content arrives on another platform that you trust. (in my dreams)
 
Really?? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this. People don’t think anymore.
 
There is an easy explanation. Google and Amazon are UPFRONT in that they leverage your data in order to make your lives and their services better.

Apple pretends to be privacy focused but is shady with it. Who is more "trustworthy". The criminal who tells you that he's going to steal your microwave and does it? Or the guy who says he's not a thief but steals your stuff behind your back?
 
Grassroots marketing matters. There’s been a concerted effort here and elsewhere to paint Apple with a negative image on every opportunity— whether relevant to the discussion or not. Conspiracy theories and small failures get amplified.

The irony is that when you make great progress on something, people hold you to a higher standard. If you expect Google and Amazon to be evil through and through and then realize it’s not as bad as you thought, you have a more favorable opinion. If you find out Apple is significantly better, but not as perfect as they say they’d like to be, you have a more negative opinion.

By no objective measure is Apple worse at privacy than either of those companies.
 
aplnub said:
I don't trust any of them. Apple has ruined their privacy high ground. At least FB and Amazon didn't parade around holier then though about it.
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Yeah, it's pure Apple marketing. I'll change my mind if they protect privacy in a way that directly hurts their margins, which so far has never happened. So far all they do is cut out their competitors' data mining. And that CSAM detection thing is nuts.

Still trust Amazon even less because they've shown that they don't care. But I also don't care, which is why I have a Ring.
 
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TVreporter said:
Not really surprising, I'm willing to bet there very few who participated in the survey are tech savvy or hang around on these forums.

And most people simply don't care and will give up their data for the sake of convenience.
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Translation, they listen to a different game of telephone but I’m right. Some smug people on McRumors who can’t pass on the chance to put others down when they disagree with any forum herd mentality. I lost a lot of trust in Apple when government demands for a back door reached a fever pitch. Then presto Tim and other tech companies had a few meetings at the Whitehouse and Poof it all disappeared. Then state sponsored entities like NSO and worse intellexa have no problem hacking IOS. Apple’s and others response, nada.
 
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All this shows is that Apple users aren't willing to risk compromising their data or privacy by clicking on some random poll on the Internet.

And I say this as a happy Pixel 6 Pro owner.
 
827538 said:
Amazing as AWS has had three major outages this month alone.
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IDK how this is related to the article, but AWS still has the best track record for reliability of any cloud provider. When they have outages, it's almost always regional rather than global (the exception being a big S3 outage years ago), compared to GCP who has had several global outages.
 
I feel for die hards here thinking they trust apple. As Steve Jobs would say after a few drinks “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist”
 
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Unregistered 4U said:
A poll of just over a thousand US internet users. OH, I guess that’s fair, there’s only, what, 4 thousand internet users in the US anyway? Plus, it must be REALLY hard to get more than a thousand internet users to provide their opinion on something. So, this is more than likely the BEST possible outcome.

I don’t think it gets much more clickbaity than this :)
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Also considering Amazon owns Washington post. I’m betting it was a fairly targeted survey
 
dba415 said:
Apple pretends to be privacy focused but is shady with it. Who is more "trustworthy". The criminal who tells you that he's going to steal your microwave and does it? Or the guy who says he's not a thief but steals your stuff behind your back?
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Well, I trust the banks...sorta. I know they're robbing me every month (maintenence fee), every time I do anything (banking fee), borrow money (interest rate fees), withdraw money (ATM fee), but I trust my money will be safer at the bank than under my mattress.

As long as my money is safe the other thieves, I guess I can ✌️"trust"✌️ the king of thieves--banks.
 
These are the same people that try to tell me that 5G is a top priority feature and the iPhone X should have had it back then.
 
Google's whole business model is to collect your data and then use it to spam you with ads. Same with Amazon. Every time I look something up on Amazon it is advertised to me on almost every webpage I visit. How do these people think they do a better job at privacy than Apple?!?
 
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