Social logins on the rise

This is a 45% increase from the number that reported doing this in a study carried out in 2012, and of those who have used social login – logging in to websites via a social media profile – 66% report using it “whenever it is an option”, or “often”: almost double the percentage ( 35%) who gave those responses in 2012. This is despite 47% of consumers saying they were concerned about organisations selling their data.

“Social logins provide the illusion of convenience with a major impact on privacy and loss of control of your profile data,” said David Alexander, chief executive of personal data store, Mydex. “Every time you use it you tell Google, Facebook or Twitter where you are and that is potentially valuable and/ or private. Use of this information affects your life in unseen and unknown ways and makes some money off you at the same time.”

The reasons behind the rise of social login are, according to the report, primarily convenience-based. Of those who reported using this method, 53% said they did so because they didn’t want to spend time filling in registration forms, and 47% said they didn’t want to create or remember another user name or password.

These numbers come from data collected by OnePoll in July 2014 on 2,000 US adults aged 18-55. Further findings can be found here.