Report: Smartphone users are wary of privacy breaches

As the use of Smartphones continues to grow in the U.S., the majority of users are very sensitive about how much personal information they have to share when downloading apps – so says a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

The statistics show that 88 percent of Americans have cell phones, and 43 percent of those cell phone owners download apps on their phones. Of that chunk, 54 percent said they had declined in the past to download various apps because of the amount of personal information they would be forced to share, while an additional 30 percent uninstalled apps for the same reason after initially downloading them. According to the study, men were more likely to uninstall apps, while app users with at least some college experience were more likely to not download apps than those without any college experience.

Nearly one third of cell phone users polled said they had lost a phone or had a phone stolen at some point, and that number jumped (perhaps not surprisingly) to 45 percent for users between the ages of 18 and 24. A sizable portion of that younger age range (24 percent) said that others had used their phones in ways they felt violated their privacy; 12 percent of all users polled made the same claim.

Wary of losing stored data, 42 percent of users said they backed up the contents of their mobile devices, while 32 percent cleared their browsing history and 19 percent disabled location tracking.

The results of the study showed no significant difference in usage behaviors between people who use Apple’s iPhone and those who use Google’s Android platform.