Brits feel less safe online according to government report

A government report has found a big rise in the number of Brits who do not feel safe online. 

Members of the public were polled in late 2021 and mid 2022 to gather the data and compare the two sets to examine the changes in attitude of respondents with 38% disagreeing with the statement that they feel safe online from cyber-attacks, frauds and scams in 2021, rising to 45% of adults disagreeing in 2022.

The findings, which also show that most people believe that digital technology has actually made their lives better overall, were published as part of a government effort to better understand public feeling on technology under the ‘Plan for Digital Regulation.’

Published by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the report said: ‘We wanted to understand whether people feel an overall benefit from digital technologies and whether people feel we have the right rules in place.’ 

This data will also now serve as a baseline for future assessments to identify changes in how the public sees the benefits and harms of technology and digital regulation. 

Whilst most of the data stayed relatively consistent across the two survey periods, other key findings in the report include the fact that young and middle-aged adults, those aged 18-34 and 35-54, are significantly more likely to say the technology sector is regulated to protect their interests compared to those aged over 55, 36% and 31% of younger adults compared to only 16% of over 55s. 

Alongside describing findings from the data, the report also includes three conclusions about the implications of its data on key policy including that more needs to be done on improving the perception of choice, safety and the ability to ‘exchange ideas easily and freely.’ 

The report also states that whilst most consumers feel the benefit of digital technology, there are large concerns that need to be addressed. It says: ‘As we seek to drive prosperity through our regulation of digital technologies, we need to regularly collect evidence to understand what is working well.’ 

Safety in technology, especially with the public sector and government organisations, has been the subject of multiple surveys recently with one finding that around 75% of those organisations could not sufficiently support the IT needs of a hybrid workforce.

You can find the full findings of the latest report on the government website here.

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