From their vantage point in the cradle of high tech, Bay Area voters deeply distrust social media companies with their personal and financial information and favour government regulation of Internet privacy and security more than the rest of the country, according to a new poll. 

Just 17% of voters in Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties trust social media companies such as Menlo Park's Facebook and San Francisco's Twitter to keep their personal and financial data secure, according to the poll conducted on behalf of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the Bay Area News Group. Considering the poll respondents' tech savvy – a characteristic apparent in other survey results – their scepticism underscores the self-inflicted damage wrought by the industry's recent run of shoddy data practices and poor consumer relations.