80% Indian Internet Users Hesitate While Using Some Apps

The focus on right to privacy in public discourse has prompted 81 percent of Indian Internet users to stop using or considering not using certain apps due to privacy or data-sharing concerns, a new report said on Monday. The report reveals that owing to the pandemic, Internet usage across Indian households has spiked by 50 percent and has also fostered awareness about cyber frauds across 61 percent of the households.

"The pandemic has accelerated the penetration of Internet-based services and has consequently had a profound impact on the level of comfort people have with the use of the Internet," Lavanya Chandan, Director, OLX India, said in a statement.

When it comes to tackling misinformation, 45 percent of users responded that they now verify any news or information shared online, the report said. The pandemic has led to a surge in Internet usage across Indian households with 58 percent of the respondents indicating that all members of their families access the Internet frequently.

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In the survey, 15 percent of the respondents said that the primary users of the Internet in their household were the elderly members, and the most common use cases of Internet usage during the pandemic have been working from home, social media usage, and online shopping by 64 percent of the respondents. For the survey, OLX studied the behavior of 6000 Indian Internet users.

Of these, 73 percent were millennials between the age groups of 18-37 while 23 percent were non-millennials above the age of 37. Fifty-three percent of the respondents were from metro cities while 47 percent of the respondents were from non-metro cities across India. (IANS)