Majority trust Apple to keep their data protected and safe

Steven Loeb · March 22, 2016 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/4429

Only 10% care about security when buying a new phone, instead going for price and performance

Updated with comment from Yahoo

The fight between Apple and the FBI basically comes down to two sides: security versus privacy. It's a fight we've been having since the beginning of time, and it's only become more heated in the years since 9/11, as technology has evolved to make our information even more vulnerable to governments and hackers.

 For companies like Apple, and others in the tech space, having users feel secure is key to their continued success. It seems obvious that the less users trust them, the less they will be willing to share.

So a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos should make most of them feel pretty good. Not all companies fared well, though.

When asked if they trusted companies to protect their data from hackers, a majority, roughly 60 percent, of the 1,703 adults surveyed said they either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that Apple would keep them safe.

The same number said the same thing about Google, Amazon and Microsoft. 

In fact, only two companies fell below the 50 percent mark: Yahoo and Facebook. For Yahoo, it was 44 percent who said they thought it would keep their information safe from hackers. Facebook fared even worse, as only 39 percent of respondents trust the company to keep their information safe. 

The number of people who say they trust Facebook seems almost counterintuative, given how many people are on the platform, over 1.55 billion, and how much information they share. It's almost as if they believe their information is vulnerable, yet they keep posting anyway.

It's also interesting that people have so much faith in Apple considering what's happened in the past (just ask Jennifer Lawrence how she feels about the company and how secure the data is) but that seems to have translated into a bit of complacency on the part of the public. They care more about their phone being fast than it being secure.

Only 10 percent of those surveyed said that security was the most important thing to consider when they went to buy a new phone. Over a third, on the other hand, said it was either the price, or the performance, of the phone that they cared about more. If I'm being honest, those are the two things I think about when buying a new phone as well. Security, or a lack thereof, doesn't even come into my mind. 

“We’re committed to protecting our users, and have encrypted our network and communications products to ensure that our users’ information is secure. We’re proud of the trust our users place in us, a trust we’ve built up over more than 20 years in the business. We will continue to work hard everyday to maintain and build that trust, in part by continuously innovating on our products to ensure the most secure experience possible," a Yahoo spokesperson told VatorNews.

VatorNews reached out to Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon for comment. We will update this story if we hear back from them. 

Results like this will probably bolster Apple's argument against the FBI over whether or not the government should be able to access the iPhone of one of the killers in the San Bernardino terrorist attack last year.

CEO Tim Cook has framed the battle as one that could lead to a dangerous precedent, something he reiterated again at Apple's event on Monday.

"We built the iPhone for you, our customers," Cook said. "We need to decide, as a nation, how much power the government should have over our data and our privacy."

Given how many people trust Apple with their information, it's not likely that the company will give that up that position any time soon.

(Image source: kalexy.com)

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