People aged 65 and over are the most concerned about the registration of their activities for advertising purposes: 38 % are very concerned about this, while this number is only 27 % for the whole group of Internet users.
Furthermore, people aged 65 and over share personal data for advertising purposes much more easily (only 35 % refuse) than all Internet users (45 % refuse).
This is what emerged from the ICT survey among households conducted by Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, during the first half of 2020. A number of new questions were also asked about privacy and security.
41 % of Internet users limit or refuse to grant access to their geographic location and 30 % limit the access to their profile or content on social networks or on cloud services for the online registration of data. Here also, people aged 65 and over are much less cautious with 29 % and 18 % respectively.
60 % of smartphone users refuse or (sometimes) limit the access to their personal data when opening an app. For people aged 65 and over, this figure is only 33 %. On the other hand, only 18 % of this age group indicate that they do not have any security software on their smartphone, compared to 24 % of all smartphone users.