Survey: Facebook Most Feared Tech Company for Privacy

Facebook privacy issuesAccording to a poll conducted for CNBC.com, Facebook is by far the tech company that consumers most fear when it comes to protecting their privacy. 45 percent of those surveyed said Facebook concerned them the most with how the site collects personal information, while Google was a distant second at 21 percent. Apple was third at 6.6 percent.

The 10-question online survey, conducted by SurveyMonkey, polled 547 random adults around the country across all income brackets. The findings are damning for Facebook, which has gone to great lengths recently to improve its reputation among users. However, despite the site’s best efforts, 35 percent of people surveyed still believed that Facebook was the tech company most likely to be involved in a corporate scandal. It’s clear the site still has a ton of public relations work to do before its image can even begin to be rehabilitated.

“Until they forcefully say, `We care about customer privacy and this is why we care,’ there’s going to be a perception problem,” said Bradley Shear, an expert in social media law.

Perhaps worst of all for the site: the amount of respondents who are skeptical about its very future. 23 percent said Facebook is the tech company most likely to be obsolete in 10 years. Though that belief seems extreme, it also illustrates just how thoroughly disillusioned many Facebook users are with the site and its privacy practices.