Prague, April 19 (CTK) – Only one in three Czechs is interested in personal data protection and one in five is aware of the EU’s privacy protection directive (GDPR) that will take effect on May 25, according to the STEM/MARK poll whose results were released on Thursday.
More than two thirds of the respondents said they did not have enough information about personal data protection. Even among university graduates who seem to be informed the best, the majority of them feel they lack information on the issue.
Three out of five said they never heard of the GDPR, others heard of it but know nothing about it.
The pollsters said other polls showed that the Czech public traditionally has the feeling that the state does not sufficiently provide it with information on important legislative steps.
“This has been confirmed in case of the GDPR. It was further emphasised by the rather unclear competences of the private and public sectors in the raising of public awareness of the prepared changes,” the poll’s author Pavel Simonik said.
People mostly want to protect their birth certificate number, ID number or number of their bank account. One in ten is strongly afraid of the violation of the data, one in three showed some concern over it.
People fear that they data might be abused on the Internet and they have the least fear to provide their data to doctors.
Two out of five changed their attitude to personal data protection over the past three years, the pollsters said.
The GDPR aims to help protect the rights of EU citizens against the abuse of their data.
