• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 19, 2019

Instagram’s in-app checkout announced Tuesday leaves questions about who owns the purchase data and whether consumers feel comfortable about giving up an increasing amount of information to a Facebook subsidiary, though the company says it won’t share the data with others.

Overall, consumers have become leery of third party companies using their private data. In a recent consumer data privacy survey, two in three consumers said they would dump the data-collecting apps on their phone if the information collected is unrelated to the app’s function. That’s unless they receive “real value” in exchange when searching on through emails.

The SurveyMonkey study, which was conducted prior to Instagram's announcement for Anagog, which uses artificial intelligence to collect data and build on-device user profiles, also suggests people are willing to pay a small monthly fee to keep their data private. In fact nearly 54% said they would do so.

Some 24.51% say they accept that mobile apps track their behavior as part of the free model, but 22.55% say they are “mad” and don’t believe they have the power to change it.

Nearly 51% of survey participants are concerned about the companies having access to their personal online data and activities, the remainder are concerned with access to physical location data such as where they live and work.

The Anagog survey asked a series of questions about data collection that suggests too many consumers want to keep their data private, but cannot tell what apps do and don’t collect and share information about them. More than 95% of the participants live in the United States, about half identified themselves as male and the remainder female.

Identity theft is the biggest fear of app users. Nearly 64% are concerned.

Nearly 68% of the 83% survey participants who know that “major internet giants” collect personal information and use it to their benefit or sell to third parties said if they knew the name of the app collecting the data they would uninstall it.

Only a little more than one-quarter of people who use apps know how to tell if it collects information about them.

Some 35% said they are willing to share their data to receive relevant recommendations, from the app’s community of users or from the app itself.

It’s not clear if people are willing to pay for the apps to protect their privacy or whether they just don’t want to pay for apps. When asked if the benefits of not paying for the apps worth giving up a bit of data and privacy, only 11.44% said Yes. Nearly 37% said No, and about 51% said only for crucial apps like those that provide email and the ability to search for things and information.