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.
In May, a white paper by Parks Associates, a market research firm, compiled with Iris, a cyber protection company, found among 10,000 internet-connected households surveyed, nearly half reported exper...
Film piracy increased by 38.6% last year, according to anti-piracy tech company Muso, and by 2027 the streaming video on-demand business could lose $113 billion annually from content theft, per an Apr...
Those who use over-the-air antennas are a significant slice of the broadband universe. Parks Associates said that about one-quarter of U.S. broadband households used an antenna to watch local broadcas...
Apple devices are a mainstay of US households. The portfolio of devices are so frequent around the United States, that almost a fifth of the population is an Apple loyalist. Parks Associates, a mar...
