With internet users becoming more wary of online safety, one privacy checker website may hold some clues …

Internet users leave digital footprints when they use various online services. A typical footprint may include websites visited, photos uploaded, and social media interactions such as comments, posts and reactions.

So which services and platforms do internet users have the most privacy concerns about?

According to anonymized data collected between December 2019 and August 2021 on Kaspersky’s Privacy Checker website, most users were worried about the security of popular mobile operating systems (21.2%) and Google’s privacy level (18.3%). 

Among the most popular requests for privacy were Google settings on Android (11.1%), security rules for Android OS (7.3%), and WhatsApp settings on Android (5.9%).

Other findings

When it came to social networks, users most frequently viewed the Facebook security pages on various platforms (15.7%). Also:

  • Instagram was the second most reviewed social network in terms of the number of requests for settings privacy: its total share of appeals was 9.9%.
  • TikTok took third place with an 8.1% share of requests for security settings. Considering its monthly active audience is four times smaller than Facebook’s (689 million versus 2.9 billion), the numbers show that the privacy offered by TikTok is also of great concern to users.
  • Among messenger services, users were most concerned with the WhatsApp security level: the share of requests about its security policy was 13.9%.
  • The Russian social network VK also made it into the top global queries, at 7.7%. VK is Russia’s most popular social network, and the share of security instructions requests among Russian users was 25.3%.

Commented Sergey Malenkovich, Head of Social Media, Kaspersky: “Most everyday actions users take on the web can lead to the accumulation of a digital footprint. This can include IP address, comments, photos and geotags, or biometric data inferred from those photos. The high share of TikTok-related requests indicates both interest in the platform itself and user concern about some of the brand’s data collection practices, which have recently been highlighted in the media.”