KATE THOMPSON DAVY: He’s a ten, but has no internet presence: is opting out of online even an option?
More than a third of people globally would delete themselves off the internet if they could, a survey says
A surprising claim, drawn from a new survey being promoted by NordVPN, recently caught my eye: the cybersecurity and digital privacy service provider says “over a third of people globally would delete themselves [off the internet] if they could”.
I think it’s important to state upfront that this is one study, undertaken by a commercial entity whose raison d’être is digital privacy. It is literally invested in helping people hide what they do online and actively reduce their online data footprint. As such, we do need to apply a healthy dose of scepticism when assessing the claims of its report, but it is not an insignificant finding. Or perhaps I just mean it warrants exploration, because it’s so intuitively confronting. Is opting out of an online presence even an option in 2022?..
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