As privacy fears grow, survey reveals few trust Facebook

MOST Australians do not trust Facebook and four in five users fear their information could be hacked.

Just 15 per cent of the population are confident Facebook will keep their personal data secure, according to the national YouGov Galaxy survey done before the emergence of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed sensitive information was harvested from more than 50 million Facebook profiles and used to target US voters with tailored advertisements.

“If the survey was re-run now I’d say the level of trust in Facebook would have slumped significantly – and it was starting from a low benchmark,” said YouGov Galaxy manag- ing director David Briggs.

The survey, commissioned by News Corp Australia, found 62 per cent of Australians do not trust Facebook and 84 per cent say they should be able to opt out of having their information stored.

Given millions of Australian are using Facebook every day, the level of trust in it was “phenomenally low”, Mr Briggs said.

University of WA senior research fellow David Glance said Australians were “waking up to how much information they are leaking through Facebook”.

“Facebook built a platform, they don’t really know how it’s being used by bad actors and don’t really know how to control that,” said Associate Professor Glance, who recently took steps to lock down his personal data on Facebook and sold his $30,000 of shares in what was, until recently, the world’s fifth-largest company.

Its business model was based on collecting as much information about users as possible “and exploiting it”, he said.

Facebook has detailed data on about 16 million Australians. Many have provided their date of birth, credit card details and names of relatives. Some users have discovered Facebook has logs of their phone calls and text messages.

While there is a growing awareness that it tracks other sites you visit on the internet, what is less well known is Facebook recently began using facial recognition to identify users in photos.

The YouGov Galaxy poll found even a majority of Millennials do not trust Facebook.