A new poll by data research firm Toluna via Recode attempted to analyze the least trusted companies in the tech sector.
Conducted between December 9 through December 15, the poll surveyed one thousand online participants asking which company they believe to be the least trustworthy with personal information.
Facebook by no surprise took the number one spot, with a whopping 40% of the respondents doubting the social media giant’s ability to keep information safe. In a much more secure second place came Twitter, with only 8% expressing privacy concerns.
Apple ultimately tied for 4th place in regards to most trusted, with just 4% casting doubt on the company. This proves interesting considering Apple’s sharp stance on promoting user privacy as a critical aspect of the brand.
Besides the fact Apple just released its latest ttransparency report alongside an easy to navigate interactive website, the company also frequently boasts about its widely used end-to-end encryption — a feature becoming more rare by the day.
As for the final top three spots? Tesla, Microsoft and Netflix.
While Microsoft has had the benefit of being one of the largest tech companies in the world, it’s been able to operate without much media scrutiny over the past few years as more pressing privacy discussions from Facebook, Google and Apple have taken center stage.
This might offer a possible explanation as to why the firm ranks so well this month.
With Facebook at a mind-boggling 40% untrustworthy-rate, Amazon and Twitter’s 8% rates pale in comparison.
As for Tesla, it seems clear the company’s lead man Elon Musk has a cultivated a certain intangible effect akin to late-Apple CEO Steve Jobs in creating a trustworthy, premier company that can “do no wrong.”
Facebook being untrustworthy in the eyes of consumers should come as little surprise. IIn April, a similar survey by Recode generated comparable findings. Then, nearly 57% of poll respondents took issue with Facebook, with just 2% finding concerns with Apple.
Just weeks ago, a flaw saw Facebook accidentally share private photos with developers from 6.8 million users, with the company ending their statement with a brief: “we’re sorry this happened”.
Facebook described the incident as such.
Our internal team discovered a photo API bug that may have affected people who used Facebook Login and granted permission to third-party apps to access their photos. We have fixed the issue but, because of this bug, some third-party apps may have had access to a broader set of photos than usual for 12 days between September 13 to September 25, 2018
Currently, we believe this may have affected up to 6.8 million users and up to 1,500 apps built by 876 developers. The only apps affected by this bug were ones that Facebook approved to access the photos API and that individuals had authorized to access their photos.
How do you feel about the results of this poll? Do you also view Facebook as the least trustworthy tech company, or do you have a different answer? Let us know down below in the comments!
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- How Facebook sneakily uses IP data & more for targeted ads, even if users disable all location settings
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