Study Shows How Facebook Users Affected by Data Breaches Reacted
Data breaches cause outrage, shake people’s trust, and regularly lead to calls for more data protection measures. But how do people actually react when they find out that their own data is affected—and how long do these effects last?
A research team led by Professor Hartmut Höhle from the University of Mannheim has been researching this question with regard to one of the most prominent data scandals in the past years: the Cambridge Analytica scandal at Facebook. At the time, data from more than 80 million Facebook users had been used for political purposes without their knowledge.
The results show that—as expected—people who learn that their data is affected initially react much more strongly than those not affected. Immediately after an incident becomes known, trust in and loyalty toward the platform decrease, while feelings of anger and disappointment increase. What is surprising, however, is that these differences have largely disappeared again six months later. In the later survey, the attitudes of the users affected had almost returned to their original levels.