The recent Facebook data breach freaked out several Apple employees enough for them to consider deleting their accounts, according to an anonymous survey of tech employees by the app Blind.
Of 256 Apple employees who responded to Blind’s survey, 22 percent said they will close out their Facebook accounts, while another 20 percent said they were not on Facebook.
Blind is an anonymous social network app for professionals to raise concerns they otherwise can’t do opening in their workplaces. It is especially popular with tech workers. Some 7,000 Apple employees use Blind. Its membership base also includes more than 44,000 Microsoft employees and 30,000 from Amazon.
Facebook data breach making some nervous
After Facebook said in September that hackers obtained information on millions of accounts, Blind sent its members one question: Will the latest data breach case you to delete your Facebook account?
Overall, more than 5,200 app users responded to the question with 16 percent answering yes, 66 percent no and more than 17 percent saying they are not on Facebook.
Facebook has been in crisis mode all year over data breaches. Earlier this year, it admitted that Cambridge Analytica mined data from Facebook profiles without consent and shared it with political campaigns.
“Shortly after this, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, criticized Facebook and called for the company to be regulated,” Blind’s Kyle McCarthy wrote on the app company’s blog. “Given Cook’s criticism of Facebook, we decided it would be interesting to see how Apple employees responded to our latest survey question.”
Blind was launched in South Korea a few years back and has been credited with reshaping corporate culture there, according to a 2016 article in Forbes magazine.
It gained notice following a huge media story about the daughter of a Korean Air executive who had dressed down a flight attendant for serving her nuts in a bag instead of on a plate. The story circulated first among Korean Air employees who had downloaded the app to discuss the incident.
In that same article, Forbes quoted an unnamed Microsoft employee who said his company values it to solicit feedback for product launches and policy changes.
