- A new study found that trust in Facebook’s data handling dramatically collapsed following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
- The study, by the Ponemon Institute, a think tank, found just 27% of people thought Facebook would protect their privacy, compared with 79% in 2017.
- Respondents were upset Facebook did not publicly acknowledge the data breach in 2015.
Trust in Facebook has spectacularly collapsed after the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was revealed to have improperly accessed data from as many as 87 million users.
A survey of 3,000 people by the Ponemon Institute, a US think tank, reported by the Financial Times, showed that users were significantly more skeptical than they were last year that Facebook would handle their personal information with care.
In the week after the former Cambridge Analytica staffer Christopher Wylie’s revelations about the data breach, just 27% of respondents to the Ponemon study agreed with the statement “Facebook is committed to protecting the privacy of my personal information.”
This was a substantial drop from the 79% of people who agreed with the statement in 2017. In fact, the graph below suggests confidence in Facebook’s data handling had been trending up since 2015.
The findings support Business Insider Intelligence's 2018 Digital Trust survey, which found that 81% of Facebook users have little to no confidence in the company to protect their data and privacy. These fears were considerably more pronounced for Facebook than they were for Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube.
Ponemon has been polling US Facebook users for most of the past decade, according to the FT. It said some respondents were particularly upset the company had not informed them of the Cambridge Analytica data breach in 2015, when Facebook learned of it.
"They put Facebook on such a high pedestal that the bottom is more painful," Ponemon's chairman, Larry Ponemon, told the FT. Business Insider has contacted the think tank for the full results of its survey.