Online privacy statistics show a wide gap between concern and control. In 2023, U.S. adults reported limited understanding of data practices and privacy laws, while 2024 complaint data documented millions of fraud and identity-theft reports and more than $12 billion in reported fraud losses.
Key Online Privacy Statistics
The following figures summarize major online privacy findings for the United States and, where noted, Verizon’s global breach dataset:
- 81% of U.S. adults were very or somewhat concerned about companies’ use of collected data in 2023.
- 73% of U.S. adults said they had very little or no control over data collected by companies in 2023.
- 67% of U.S. adults said they understood very little or nothing about what companies did with collected data in 2023.
- 72% of U.S. adults favored more government regulation of companies’ use of customer information in 2023.
- 56% of U.S. adults frequently agreed to privacy policies without reading them in 2023.
- 69% of U.S. adults viewed privacy policies as something to get past in 2023.
- 68% of U.S. social-media users had changed their privacy settings in 2023.
- About 68% of U.S. adults had declined or turned off cookies or other website tracking in 2023.
- 49% of U.S. adults had stopped using a device, website or app because of concern about personal-information use by 2023.
- 44% of U.S. adults had used a browser or search engine that does not track activity in 2023.
- 36% of U.S. adults had used encrypted messaging for private communications in 2023.
- 53% of U.S. adults felt very or somewhat confident they knew what to do after online information theft in 2023.
- The FTC received 6.47 million Consumer Sentinel reports in the United States in 2024.
- Fraud represented 2.6 million, or 40%, of U.S. Consumer Sentinel reports in 2024.
- Identity theft represented 1.1 million, or 18%, of U.S. Consumer Sentinel reports in 2024.
- People reported more than $12 billion lost to fraud in the United States in 2024.
- Imposter scams generated $2.95 billion in reported U.S. losses in 2024.
- Email was the contact method in 25% of U.S. fraud reports that identified a contact method in 2024.
- 68% of breaches in Verizon’s 2024 global analyzed incident dataset involved a non-malicious human element.
- 15% of breaches in Verizon’s 2024 global analyzed incident dataset involved a third party or supplier.
Contents
- Online privacy attitudes, control and understanding
- Privacy policy statistics and consent behavior
- Online privacy protection actions and confidence
- Privacy breaches, identity theft and consumer losses
- Online privacy scams, channels and payment losses
- Business data-breach statistics affecting personal privacy
Online Privacy Attitudes, Control and Understanding
Pew Research Center’s 2023 survey measures perceptions among U.S. adults, not technical exposure or independently measured behavior. The results describe how respondents understand data collection by companies and government.
| 2023 measure among U.S. adults | Share |
|---|---|
| Very or somewhat concerned about company data use | 81% |
| Very or somewhat concerned about government data use | 71% |
| Very little or no control over company-collected data | 73% |
| Very little or no control over government-collected data | 79% |
| Understand very little or nothing about company data use | 67% |
| Understand very little or nothing about government data use | 77% |
| Little or no understanding of privacy laws | 72% |
Source: Pew Research Center, “Views of data privacy risks, personal data and digital privacy laws in America”. These are self-reported perceptions.
Trust in personal decision-making coexists with limited perceived influence. 78% of U.S. adults said they trusted themselves to make the right decisions about personal information online, while 61% said nothing they did would make much difference in how companies used their data.
The longer-term comparison also points to rising uncertainty. The share saying they understood little or nothing about companies’ data use rose from 59% in 2019 to 67% in 2023, while concern about government data use rose from 64% to 71% over the same period.
Views on policy are similarly clear. 72% favored more government regulation of what companies could do with customers’ personal information, compared with 7% who favored less regulation.
Privacy Policy Statistics and Consent Behavior
Pew’s 2023 U.S. adult survey found that privacy-policy acceptance was common even when respondents did not read the policy. The frequency measure defines “frequently” as always, almost always or often.
| Privacy-policy measure, 2023 | Share of U.S. adults |
|---|---|
| Frequently agree without reading | 56% |
| Sometimes agree without reading | 22% |
| Rarely or never agree without reading | 18% |
| Say policies are not too or not at all effective | 61% |
| Say policies are somewhat effective | 27% |
| Say policies are extremely or very effective | 7% |
| See policies as something to get past | 69% |
| See policies as meaningful to use decisions | 27% |
Source: Pew Research Center, “How Americans protect their online data and privacy”. These are self-reported behaviors and evaluations.
Age differences are substantial: 72% of adults under 30 frequently agreed without reading, compared with 39% of adults ages 65 and older. Concern and disengagement can overlap; 45% were both concerned about company data use and frequent nonreaders, a combined survey classification that does not establish causation.
The findings describe a communication problem as well as a consent pattern. Only 7% called privacy policies extremely or very effective at communicating data use, while 61% rated them not too or not at all effective.
Online Privacy Protection Actions and Confidence
Protection actions varied by tool, age and education in Pew’s 2023 survey. The social-media figures use social-media users as the denominator; the other figures generally refer to U.S. adults.
| Protection action reported in 2023 | Share |
|---|---|
| Social-media users changed privacy settings | 68% |
| Adults declined or turned off cookies or other tracking | About 68% |
| Adults stopped using a device, website or app over data-use concerns | 49% |
| Adults used a nontracking browser or search engine | 44% |
| Adults used encrypted messaging | 36% |
Source: Pew Research Center, “How Americans protect their online data and privacy”. The tracking figure uses approximate wording in the source, and the stopping-use measure is a self-reported lifetime/action measure.
Age differences appear across several actions. Among social-media users, 76% under age 50 had changed privacy settings, compared with 62% ages 50 to 64 and 50% ages 65 and older.
Among adults, 49% under age 50 had used a nontracking browser or search engine versus 38% age 50 or older, and 42% versus 30% had used encrypted messaging.
Education differences were also reported. 73% of adult social-media users with some college or more had changed privacy settings, compared with 60% with high school or less; 72% with college experience had turned off website tracking, compared with 56% without college experience.
Confidence after an incident was limited. Only 53% of U.S. adults felt very or somewhat confident they knew what to do if personal information was hacked or stolen online; 54% of adults under 30, 44% ages 30 to 49 and 39% age 50 and older were not too or not at all confident about next steps.
The survey also recorded unequal reported experiences. 44% of Black adults reported at least one of three specified data breaches in the prior 12 months, and 20% reported unauthorized takeover of an email or social-media account; these are survey-defined experiences, not all privacy incidents.
Privacy Breaches, Identity Theft and Consumer Losses
The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book counts reports from consumers and contributing organizations. They are unverified complaints, not a population survey or incidence estimate, and reported losses are subject to underreporting.
In 2024, the FTC received 6.47 million Consumer Sentinel reports in the United States. Fraud accounted for 2.6 million reports, or 40%; identity theft accounted for 1.1 million, or 18%; and other consumer-protection reports totaled 2.8 million, or 43%.
| 2024 Consumer Sentinel category | Reports or share |
|---|---|
| Credit bureaus and information furnishers | 21% of reports |
| Imposter scams | 13% of reports |
| Existing or new credit-card misuse within identity-theft reports | 449,032 reports |
| Fraud reports indicating money lost | 38% of 2.6 million reports |
| Median loss among fraud reports | $497 |
Source: FTC, “Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024”. Category shares are report shares, not population risk; the $497 figure is a median among reported losses, not an average consumer loss.
People reported losing more than $12 billion to fraud in 2024. The totals represent reported losses only, so they should not be interpreted as the complete financial cost of online privacy-related fraud.
Online Privacy Scams, Contact Channels and Payment Losses
Imposter scams were a major reported pathway in the FTC’s 2024 U.S. data. Sentinel received 845,806 imposter-scam reports; 22% indicated a dollar loss, totaling $2.95 billion.
Other reported loss categories show the scale of payment exposure. Investment-related scams generated more than $5 billion in reported losses, while bank transfers and payments were linked to $2.09 billion and cryptocurrency to $1.42 billion.
| 2024 scam or channel measure | Reported result |
|---|---|
| Imposter-scam reports | 845,806 |
| Imposter reports indicating loss | 22%; $2.95 billion |
| Investment-related scam losses | More than $5 billion |
| Bank transfers and payments | $2.09 billion |
| Cryptocurrency | $1.42 billion |
Source: FTC, “Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024”. These are reported losses, not estimates of all losses.
Email was the contact method in 25% of fraud reports where a method was identified. Among email-contact reports, 11% indicated a loss totaling $502 million, and the median loss was $600.
Text-message scams produced $470 million in reported losses in 2024, more than five times the 2020 amount. The five leading text-scam types accounted for about half of all text fraud reported to the FTC in 2024; that share is an FTC estimate of reported text fraud.
Business Data-Breach Statistics Affecting Personal Privacy
Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report describes an analyzed global dataset of real-world incidents and breaches. Its figures do not represent the probability that an individual consumer will be breached.
| Finding in Verizon’s 2024 DBIR | Share or outcome |
|---|---|
| Breaches involving vulnerability exploitation as initial access | 14% |
| Breaches involving a non-malicious human element | 68% |
| Financially motivated incidents involving ransomware or extortion | 62% |
| Median loss for ransomware or extortion breaches | $46,000 |
| Breaches involving a third party or supplier | 15% |
Source: Verizon, “2024 Data Breach Investigations Report”. Shares apply to the report’s analyzed incident samples and subsets, not all global breaches.
The 68% human-element figure includes social engineering or error, linking personal privacy outcomes to everyday organizational activity. The 15% third-party figure includes software supply chains, hosting partners and data custodians, while the 62% ransomware-or-extortion figure applies only to financially motivated incidents.
These denominators matter when comparing consumer complaints with business breach data: FTC figures count reported complaints in the United States, Pew figures measure U.S. adult survey responses, and Verizon figures describe analyzed global incidents. They are complementary measures of privacy risk, not interchangeable rates.