Online
privacy has gone from being a minority concern to something that worries the man in the street – after a study of 2,000 people found a majority believed they were being listened to online, and nearly a third would pay to stop it.
The research, carried out with a group of 1,000 employees in the UK and 1,000 in Germany, was commissioned by Blackphone, the “ultra-private” encrypted Android handset which was
“hacked” on stage in five minutes at DEF CON (the company promised to patch the issue). Silent Circle, the company behind BlackPhone – and the widely used PGP encryption standard – clearly wishes to highlight that privacy is becoming a mainstream issue.
Privacy issues have become an increasing concern outside the security community – in part thanks to revelations of government surveillance,
as discussed by ESET researcher Stephen Cobb. Silent Circle carried out the survey in May this year, via OnePoll and found that 88% of UK workers believe their calls and texts are being listened to, versus 72% of Germans – it’s not clear by whom.
