UPDATE - Janrain's Consumer Identity Survey Shows 93% are Concerned How Brands Use/Share Their Online Activity

PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwired - October 17, 2016) - Janrain®, the leading company that created the Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) category, today announced the results of a new Consumer Identity Trends survey that shows while social login use is growing in popularity thanks to the 75% now suffering from password fatigue, 93% are nonetheless concerned about how their account data and activity are being shared and used.

While consumers are largely in favor of biometric authentication -- 66% like the idea of using fingerprint scanning or voice recognition to access accounts online -- social logins, which allow web users to quickly sign up or log on to sites using the credentials from another site, are overwhelmingly the preferred authentication method.

Facebook continues to dominate in social login rankings with 45% of all social logins using its platform. This is consistent with 45% in Q1 2016. Google comes in second with 26% (up from 25%), Yahoo at 10% (up from 7.5%) and Twitter with 9% (up from 6.5%). While percentages didn't change drastically, overall traffic increased by almost 10% from Q1 to Q2 in 2016.

The Benefits of Personalization vs. the Consequences of Over-Marketing

The majority of web users (58%) say they accept the value and convenience of using social logins while another 58% say they often refuse to sign up to a new site without one. Perhaps most heartening for marketers is the discovery that a quarter of people are already realizing the personalization benefits that come from using the same identity across two or more of their accounts.

But companies that want to continue enjoying the data their customers have trusted them with must exercise caution in how that data is used -- especially since nearly half of those surveyed say brands are failing in the way they market to them. (A third of users aren't sure.) Not only does misuse hurt adoption of social logins among users, Janrain's survey shows it can result in even more serious ramifications: a third of web users will punish over-marketing by not returning to the offender's website, while a quarter warn that they'll stop buying products from the company altogether. Brands must find meaningful ways to engage at an individual consumer level.