Privacy trust crisis of personal data in China in the era of Big Data: The survey and countermeasures

Privacy trust directly affects the personal willingness to share data and thus influences the quality and size of the data, thus affecting the development of big data technology and industry. As China is probably the largest personal data pool and vastest application market of big data, the situation of Chinese privacy trust plays a significant role. Based on the 17 most common data collection scenarios, the following aspects have been observed through 508 questionnaires and interviews of 20 samples. To start with, there is a severe privacy trust crisis in China, both in the field of enterprise services such as online shopping and social networks, etc. and in some public services like medical care and education, etc. Besides, there are also doubts about data collected by the government since individuals refuse to offer personal information or give false information as much as possible. Some people even buy two phone numbers, one is in use, while the other is not carried around or used by them, which is only bought to be offered to data collectors. Secondly, in terms of gender, females have lower trust in enterprises and social associations than males, especially in the fields of social networks and personal consumption. However, there is no obvious difference in fields of government and public services. Females possess stronger awareness but less skilled in precautions than males. Thirdly, people between the ages of 18 and 50 are more suspicious of data collected by enterprises, while age exerts little obvious influence on the credibility of data collected by the government, social associations and public services. Older people are less aware of precautions than people at other ages. In addition, from the perspective of education background, people with higher degrees possess stronger awareness of precautions and thus lower degree of trust. Therefore, it is suggested that more education on privacy consciousness should be given, and relative laws as well as regulations need improving. Besides, innovation in privacy protection technologies should be encouraged. What is more, we need to reinforce the management of the interne industry and strictly regulate personal data collection of the government. (C) 2015 Zhong Wang & Qian Yu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.