Almost half of Russians are afraid of potential surveillance through mobile apps

Almost half of Russians are afraid of surveillance, which can be carried out on their actions allegedly using applications in gadgets, and the majority are worried about a possible leak of their personal data. This is evidenced by the results of a study by the IT company Edna, which was reviewed by Izvestia on July 3.

The study, which involved 2,790 people, was conducted in June across Russia. Within its framework, men and women aged 18 to 75 years were interviewed.

"Over the past two or three years, Russians have become more active in using mobile applications - 80% of them have increased their number on their smartphone. The level of trust in digital services remains low: 75% fear leakage of personal data, and 45% fear possible surveillance," the text says.

It turned out that at the same time, over half of citizens prefer to confirm their login to various mobile applications using an SMS code (55%) or biometrics (43%). Another 40% use a password for this purpose, and only 23% use the function of logging in through Google, Apple, or VK accounts. Of the total number of respondents, only 5% do not restrict applications in any way, and another 18% give them access to their personal banking data and the fast payment system (SBP).

"The SMS code and phone number login really remain the most popular authorization method, because they do not require additional actions from the user. But in terms of protection, this is the basic option: it depends on the SIM card and the carrier. For services where money or sensitive data is stored, it is more reliable to use multifactor authentication — for example, a combination of a password and a one-time code from a generator application or push confirmation," advised Alexander Dubrovin, business partner at Edna.

More than half of Russians allow you to track your geolocation (63%), have access to film and camera (53%), and send pop-up notifications (55%). In addition, 48% of respondents stated that they do not object to the use of microphone and contact books by applications. 18% of respondents prefer to introduce a conscious restriction of applications in tracking their actions.

Edna experts have found that against the background of low trust in platforms, 40% of Russians are also afraid of losing access to their accounts due to forgetting their password. At the same time, only 10% resort to so—called "password managers" - programs that promote secure data storage and allow the owner to conveniently manage them.

The survey showed that recently the majority of users have been consciously approaching the installation of new services for fear of overloading their gadget. For example, 38% of the study participants said they have 10 to 20 apps, and one in four said they use 20 to 40 apps. At the same time, messengers remained the basic tool for all respondents. Marketplaces are the second most popular (93%), and banking applications are the third (90%). The top 5 includes navigation maps (80%), as well as various government services (65%). Food delivery apps are also in demand (60%), as well as those that perform recreational functions, such as helping to watch videos and listen to music (55%).

About a third of users install the applications they need for work and training. Sports and health applications, as well as smart home solutions, remain less widespread, with 20% and 13% using them, respectively.

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On April 23, the press service of the Department for Combating the Illegal Use of Information and Communication Technologies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation told Russians how to improve the security of their home Wi-Fi. The experts called for changing the password there to a more complex one first, then they recommended changing the router administrator's data settings by entering one of the addresses they named, and finally replacing the standard admin/admin username and password with individual ones.