Privacy Concerns Among The Millennials

Privacy concerns among the millennials

In Brief:

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• Millennials are more susceptible to various issues when compared to the other generations who did not use social media at such a young age.
• Research has found that using free Wi-Fi networks, using same mobile for personal and professional use, using devices that do not have suitable protection for sharing information makes the millennials susceptible to various privacy issues
• The millennials are very much concerned about government surveillance, financial fraud, misuse of personal information, identity theft and sale of personal data.

The mass digitalization and rapidmodernization has resulted in a privacy gap that has the potential to cause serious issues to the individual users and the society as such. The privacy concern is gaining prominence for all the wrong reasons, as the users are unable to decide if they have to consider these issues and step back from using the digital advancements or continue using the digital advancements. However, not using the digital advancements leads to their exclusion from different advantages including tailor-made customer service and the social interaction (Åkerberg, 2018).

Sharing various information with their friends and followers has become a daily habit for the millennials as they have been using the social media including Facebook, Twitter, Snap chat and Instagram since their childhood. This means that data privacy of the millennials are more susceptible to various issues when compared to the other generations who did not use social media at such a young age (Åkerberg, 2018). Further, the perception about the data privacy is different among the millennials and non-millennials. The influence of a combination of technologies on the millennials is the main reason for this. Further, the non-millennials were introduced to search engines only during the adult stage. However, the millennials were introduced to the search engines during their childhood itself (Kuperus, 2016).  

 Research has found that using free Wi-Fi networks, using same mobile for personal and professional use, using devices that do not have suitable protection for sharing information makes the millennials susceptible to various privacy issues. The consciousness of the people regarding the data privacy is not consistent with the widespread mobile usage prevalent at present (Holicza & Këdena, 2018).

A survey conducn=ted by GENFORWARDS has stated that millennials, irrespective of the country and the ethnic group they belong to, are very much worried about the fact that government and other external sources have access to their private data. However, the same study has revealed that Asian millennials are very much concerned about the data issues when compared to American, African and Latin millennials (Cohen, Fowler, Medenica, & Rogowski, 2018). According to a SAS survey conducted among the US consumers, a whopping 73% of the survey population revealed that they are worried about the data issues and many about 64% of the individuals feel that the data security has reduced very much at present. However, this survey has revealed that the concerns about data security among the elderly people is very high when compared to the millennials and people belonging to generation X. The millennials are very much concerned about government surveillance, financial fraud, misuse of personal information, identity theft and sale of personal data (SAS, 2018).

Mobile device is one of the easiest targets of the attackers to invade the privacy of the individuals. Mobile phones often lead to data leakage, data hacking and data theft and this exposes the millennials to a substantial data theft. The privacy of the millennials is also threatened by various software attacks including malware, Keyloggers, Adware and Trojan. In terms of structure and technology, the malware industry is rising day-by-day. The Malware software enters into a specific data and damages the device. The users cannot use the damaged data after this software attack (Felt, Finifter, Chin, Hanna, &amp Wagner, 2011). Another attack that causes serious data concerns is Keyloggers, which is transferred with the help of file that can be opened unintentionally by the users. On the other hand, Trojan software seizes all the data available in a device. Adware, which is often used for promotions and advertisements, is often used by the attackers to gather the data from one user and transmit it illegally. Further, the presence of touchscreen and camera in the mobile phones can make the users susceptible to the software attacks. In addition to this, installing a few applications can lead to issues when the malware software is present at the source applications (Holicza & Këdena, 2018).

The awareness about the issues caused as a result of data breach should be spread among the public, especially the millennials. Privacy policy plays a very important role in increasing the awareness about various issues related to the privacy and the damages it can cause to the privacy of a single person. Therefore, websites have to take the suitable steps to improve their privacy policies thereby increasing the awareness among the individuals about different privacy concerns (Hooda, Bhatia, & Yadav, 2017). Further, a research conducted by Kuperus, 2016   has revealed that in spite of the different data privacy concerns prevailing at present, the activities of the users online have not changed much. As the difference in the age group of the users play a significant role in influencing their activities online, the practice of the online users cannot be changed with the lack of privacy awareness.

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