Before delving into numbers, we had to answer some questions. What makes a device personal? Is it a matter of ownership or control over what happens to it? Actually, it’s a bit of all these things. Sharing is natural, particularly as so much of our lives are enhanced by devices.
This report draws on data taken from several surveys across the globe and in specific national settings. The first source is a pair of surveys on Encryption Habits in the US and UK. These surveys were conducted on April 7, 2020, through a Pollfish panel. Each survey had N=700 residents aged 18+ in the UK and the US, with representative sampling including specific quotas across age and gender.
The second source is a survey on Monitoring Family Members, conducted on January 21, 2021, through CINT. It included people aged 18+ from eight countries (US, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, France, The Netherlands, and Poland). The nationally representative sample size was 1000 people per country, for a total of 8000 respondents.
The third source is Cyber Security Potential, a survey of 1000 NordVPN users taken in July 2020. We also draw on data from our VPN for business product NordLayer. We compared the busiest times of day for business VPN servers pre-pandemic during March-April of 2020 and again in January of 2021. No user data was collected, but the VPN server usage indicates the activity of business users and, by extension, those connected to their work network from home.