The rising occurrence of high-profile security hacks and privacy breaches, as well as being personally victimized, are contributing to ever-increasing consumer anxiety about smart home devices and platforms, according to new research.
Parks Associates’ latest quarterly survey of 10,000 U.S. broadband households found that almost half of consumers rank data security and privacy issues as their greatest concerns about connecting devices to the Internet, compared to other problems they may encounter, such as with tech support. Forty percent of the respondents say they have experienced a privacy or security problem with a connected device in the past year, most commonly viruses and malware.
“Our most recent data reveals that almost half of U.S. broadband households are ‘very concerned’ [rating 6-7 on a 7-point scale] about hackers getting control of connected devices and hackers getting access to data from the device,” says Parks Associates Research Analyst Brad Russell. “In tracing trending changes on these consumer attitudes from 2014 to 2016, we find that while the total share of consumers who are ‘concerned’ [rating 5-7] has not appreciably changed, the share of those that are ‘very concerned’ has grown by 6% to 7%. Similarly, the share of consumers who are ‘not concerned [rating 1-3] has shrunk by about half.”
From the article "Network Security: Hacking Fears Could Scare Consumers Away from Smart-Home Devices" by Rodney Bosch.
Unlike seven years ago, the move pushed Netflix’s stock to new heights. The key, for Netflix’s management, was learning to raise prices without spooking subscribers—by doing so in small and infrequent...
Pay-TV operators are seeing a “slow erosion of the core business,” analyst at Parks Associates said. “After years of attempts to be more than just a ‘dumb pipe,’ pay-TV operators have come to reali...
According to the Parks Associates survey, 55 percent of Americans with at least one chronic condition aren’t speaking with their primary care physician any more than once every three months. What’s wo...
A new report from Parks Associates says that 32% of people who own smart tags say they use the device to track another person’s location without that person even knowing they’re being tracked. “The...
