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More people from India were concerned about online privacy than those in eight other countries surveyed by Big Brother Watch, a UK civil liberties and privacy pressure group.
The >survey conducted by a polling and research consultancy on behalf of the group, had covered nine countries - UK, Germany, France, Spain, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Australia. While globally 79 per cent of people said they were concerned about their personal privacy online, the figure rose to 94 per cent in the case of India. Two other countries with figures touching 90 per cent were Brazil and Spain. Respondents in Germany seemed least concerned about online privacy - 56 per cent did not have privacy concerns. And Germany is a country with strong data protection laws .
And a lot more people In India had 'very serious' concerns about online privacy when compared to the 'rest' of the world.
What this shows is that the majority of consumers in different countries are concerned about privacy, Big Brother Watch says.
Despite the relatively small sample size - just over a 1000 people were surveyd in the case of India and other countries except the UK (where it was over 2,000) - the survey offers interesting insights into the attitude of Internet users.
Compared to the rest of the world Indians did not seem all that worried about big companies collecting data for internal use: only 32 percent of consumers in India thought they were being harmed by such data collection, as compared to 41 per cent globally. Besides, 48 per cent of those surveyed in India felt that such data collection enhanced consumer experience, compared to 29 per cent globally.
On the whole, mixed views prevailed over personal data collection by companies.
There were two other questions related to Google - whether the European Union was right to investigate Google's new privacy policy and whether regulators should do more to protect privacy. Here the sentiment in India was generally not very different from that in the rest of the countries - 73 and 60 percent as opposed to 66 and 65 per cent globally.
A more comprehensive survey is likely to prove interesting, particularly if it also includes the attitudes of citizens towards government surveillance, which is now a hot subject of debate in countries like India, US and the UK.
