Private Profiles Survey: Most Social Media Users Apply Privacy Settings

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Posted Oct 15, 2013
Anne Pilon

Facebook is making some changes to its privacy settings. Previously, users could choose to have their profile hidden from search results when people they don’t know search them by name. Now that option is being taken away, though other privacy options still remain. How many people choose to keep their profiles hidden on social media sites? And how many might this change affect?

facebook privacy

Privacy Concerns

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 41% of social media users said they are very concerned with privacy on Facebook and similar sites. 42% said they are somewhat concerned with privacy. 14% said they are not very concerned. And just 3% of social media users said they are not at all concerned about privacy.

Private Profiles

46% of social media users said that all of their profiles are set to private, so that people they don’t know cannot search for them or see all of their information. 36% said that some of their social media profiles are private. And just 18% of users said that all of their profiles are completely public.If a site decided not to allow private profiles, just 9% of overall users said they would definitely continue to use such a site. 29% said they would probably continue to use a site if it did away with private profiles. 46% said they probably wouldn’t use it anymore. And 16% said they would definitely not use it anymore.

Searching Users

So how much of an issue is the ability to search for users by name? 13% of social media users said they often search for people not currently on their friends or follower lists by name. 46% said they sometimes search for other social media users by name. 30% said they rarely do. And just 11% of users said they never search for people by name on social media. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Facebook Privacy SettingsWhat do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on October 13 via AYTM’s online survey panel.

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