Irish internet users fail to read privacy fine print

Internet users in Ireland are among the worst in Europe for reading privacy policy statements online before providing personal information, a new study shows.

Ireland ranked joint second from bottom along with Poland in a report carried out by the EU statistics arm, Eurostat for checking policy statements. According to the research, just 26 per cent of Irish internet users said they looked at such statements before disclosing details about themselves, well below the EU average of 37 per cent.

Irish internet users were also found to be slack in terms of allowing the use of personal information for advertising, with just 32 per cent saying they refused to enable advertisers’ details about themselves, as against an EU average of 46 per cent. A similar percentage of users limited access to their social media profile or to content displayed on it, the study shows.

Eurostat’s study found that more than 80 per cent of EU citizens went online this year, with mobile phones by far the most popular means of accessing the internet.

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Personal information

The survey indicates that 70 per cent of internet users in the EU have provided some kind of personal information online. Almost half of them refused to allow the use of personal information for advertising and 40 per cent limited access to their profile or content on social networking sites. In addition, 37 per cent of internet users read privacy policy statements before providing personal information and 31 per cent restricted access to their geographical location.

At EU level, 94 per cent of young people aged between 16 and 24 years preferred accessing the internet via a smartphone, with 71 per cent saying they also got online using a laptop or netbook.

The use of a tablet computer was most popular among those aged between 25 and 54 years, the study shows.

In Ireland, smartphones were used by 84 per cent of the public to get online, ahead of the EU average of 79 per cent. Some 67 per cent of users also said they accessed the internet through laptops or netbooks. As many as 37 per cent of users got online via tablets, with just 25 per cent using desktop computers.