Opinion Survey: Senior Citizens' Attitudes and Perceptions towards Personal Data Privacy

1.    A survey of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (“PCPD”) found that senior citizens recognized the importance of personal data privacy, but had inadequate knowledge of personal data protection, e.g. they did not know under what circumstances they should provide their personal data; they did not know how to set passwords; they did not know that they should pay attention to the Personal Information Collection Statement before providing their personal data.

2.    The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Mr. Roderick B. Woo said, “There is no age limit in the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance.  It protects personal data of all Hong Kong citizens, including senior citizens.  Nowadays, personal data are like important assets.  Losses will be incurred if such data are stolen or misused.  The elderly are vulnerable to harm as they rely much on others in their daily life and they have little awareness of personal data protection.  By this survey, we hope that we can understand more about the perceptions and needs of the elderly so as to formulate proper education and promotion strategies to enhance their ability to protect their personal data.”

3.    To probe into senior citizens’ attitudes towards personal data privacy and their use of the Internet, the PCPD has committed the Sau Po Ageing Centre of the University of Hong Kong to conduct a survey on the “Senior Citizens’ Attitudes and Perceptions towards Personal Data Privacy”.  The survey was conducted in April 2010 by way of filling in questionnaires through one-to-one interviews.  A total of 400 senior citizens aged 60 or above in 14 elderly centres were interviewed.

4.    The survey was divided into two parts: (a) use of the Internet by senior citizens; (b) senior citizens’ awareness of personal data privacy.

A.    Use of the Internet by senior citizens

5.    The survey revealed that most of the respondents (87%) did not have the habit of using the Internet [Fig. 5].  Of the small number of respondents who used the Internet (13.3%), almost half of them (47.2%) browsed the Internet every day [Fig. 6].  They normally used the Internet at home (67.9%) and community centres/elderly centres (60.4%) [Fig. 7].  Their main purposes of using the Internet were news reading (83.0%) and receipt and sending of emails (77.4%), followed by using social networking websites (26.4%) and writing blogs (20.8%) [Fig. 8].  Of the respondents who had written blogs or used social networking websites, 61.1% had posted their photos [Fig. 10] and 27.8% had disclosed their whereabouts [Fig. 9].  On the other hand, 72.7% of the respondents would restrict strangers from accessing their blogs or profiles in social networking websites, and 22.2% did not know how to do the restriction [Fig. 11].

6.    Much different from the browsing pattern of the youth is that no respondents had engaged in online shopping.

B.    Senior citizens’ understanding of personal data privacy.

Senior citizens’ perception of personal data privacy
7.    The survey found that the respondents placed greatest importance on personal financial condition (77.7%), identity card numbers (73.3%) and family financial condition (72.8%).  In senior citizens’ mind, age (5%) and personal health (8.3%) were not considered privacy [Fig. 12].

8.    Regarding the degree of importance of personal data to Hong Kong society, though the respondents ranked “privacy” the lowest among other social issues, the average rate of the degree of importance of all the given social issues (including “privacy”) was above 4 (5 implied the most important), namely medical services (4.72), elderly care (4.67), food hygiene (4.65), air quality (4.56), unemployment problem (4.35) and privacy (4.22) [Fig. 19].

Provision of personal data to others by senior citizens
9.    The survey found that when applying for public services (82.8%) and participating in opinion surveys (58.5%), most of the respondents would provide whatever data required.  However, many respondents would also provide whatever data required when receiving parcels (25.3%) and filling in lucky draw tickets (19.0%) [Fig. 13].

10.    63.0% of the respondents had been asked for their personal data over the phone [Fig. 14].  38.2% did not know the caller at all; 37.4% knew that the callers claimed to be staff of a survey agency, and 28.0% knew that the callers claimed to be product promoters.  In such cases, only 1.0%, 5.3% and 1.4% of the respondents provided personal data to the callers respectively [Fig. 15 and table 2].

11.    96.0% of the respondents said that they would not provider personal data of their family members or friends for the purpose of getting gifts [Fig. 17].

Handling of personal data by senior citizens
12.    Most of the respondents (66.8%) did not know or were not sure how to set passwords for the services that required passwords.  For those respondents who had set passwords, 48.9% used passwords that were difficult to guess, and 13.5% used their telephone numbers or date of birth (12.8%) as passwords [Fig. 16].

13.    When disposing of documents containing personal data, most of the respondents (74.1%) torn the documents up and then put them into the rubbish bin, but 8.8% put the whole documents into the rubbish bin [Fig. 18].

14.    When providing personal data to others, most of the respondents did not know that they could refer to the Personal Information Collection Statement for the purpose of collection.  52.0% of the respondents did not even know what the Personal Information Collection Statement was.  Only 20.0% of the respondents carefully read the content of the Personal Information Collection Statement [Fig. 20].

Will senior citizens lodge complaints against misuse of personal data?
15.    Most of the respondents (74.5%) said that if their personal data were misused, they would definitely lodge a complaint [Fig. 21].  The complaint channels were Hong Kong Police (23.4%), PCPD (17.7%), organization which misused their personal data (15.7%), district councilors (11.4%), Office of the Ombudsman (3.3%), Consumer Council (1.7%).  24.7% of the respondents did not know or not sure the complaint channels.  For those who chose the item “Others” (32.1%), 55.2% of them would seek assistance from elderly centres, which amounted to 17.7% of all the complaint channels [Fig. 22].

16.    Dr. Ernest Chui, Director of Sau Po Centre on Ageing of the University of Hong Kong, who was in charge of the survey believed that it was important to educate senior citizens, especially those who lived alone, through civic education, e.g. mass media, elderly centres, etc. the items of personal data and the circumstances under which they could provide personal data to others.  As senior citizens who live alone may not be able to get assistance from their family, they are susceptible to disclosure of their personal data.  Moreover, with higher education and technology advancement, more and more senior citizens use the Internet.  Therefore, senior citizens should be educated that they have to be careful when uploading data and not to disclose their personal data and whereabouts.  Besides, they should be careful when setting passwords and should not put passwords and relevant data together.  Senior citizens are reminded that they should not provide personal data over the phone because they will easily fall into fraud and deception in this way.