New poll shows Canadians cautious about using Facebook

According to a recent survey by Delvina for ITBusiness.ca, most Canadians describe themselves as cautious users of Facebook especially when considering their privacy.  They have also adjusted their settings accordingly according to the new poll.

A little more than half of survey respondents selected “I'm cautious about my privacy and have changed my settings, and am very selective about what information I share.” The next most popular response was “I'm a little concerned about my privacy and have adjusted my privacy settings”, accounted for 25 per cent.

The poll surveyed 1,002 active Facebook users amongst Delvinia's AskingCanadians panel.  The respondents have used Facebook within the past two months and were composed of an even male-female split.

Adam Froman is the CEO of Delvina:

Canadians tend to be more conservative in their willingness to share information, and there has been a lot of media hype around the subject.  For those that are not users of social media sites like Facebook, all the media attention about Facebook has given them more reason why they should not share information, and for those who do use Facebook, the media hype has simply made them more aware of the mechanisms Facebook has put into place to control their own privacy settings.

This news comes a week after Techvibes Associate Editor, Knowlton Thomas reported that Facebook was on the verge of going to court over a 2009 PIPEDA privacy complaint and two weeks after Ottawa-based contributor Robert Janelle reported that Facebook had run out of time to comply with Canada's privacy laws.

The ball is now in Facebook's corner.  As they continue to grow and develop it will be interesting to see if they adapt to national laws (like RIM has been doing recently) or simply ignore them.

Thanks to Brian Jackson of ITBusiness.ca for giving us the heads up on this new poll.