Here’s another reason to block digital surveillance: it might reduce financial fraud. That’s the upshot of a small but promising study published as a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, “Consumer Surveillance and Financial Fraud. Authors Bo Bian, Michaela Pagel and Huan Tang...

The highlight of the research is that Apple users were less likely to be victims of financial fraud after Apple implemented the App Tracking Transparency policy. The results showed a 10% increase in the share of Apple users in a particular ZIP code leads to roughly 3% reduction in financial fraud complaints.

While the scope of the data is small, this is the first significant research we’ve seen that connects increased privacy with decreased fraud. This should matter to all of us. It reinforces that when companies take steps to protect our privacy, they also help protect us from financial fraud. This is a point we made in our Privacy First whitepaper, which discusses the many harms that a robust privacy system can protect us from. Lawmakers and regulators should take note.