Consumers who are over the age of 65 are more attuned with the traditional practice of making purchases via safe shopping online from desktop and laptop computers as opposed to portable devices, according to a new study from DMA.

45 per cent of people in this group who receive promotions via email said that they would rather go through with a transaction on a standard PC rather than sticking with their smartphone or tablet.

Furthermore, analysts revealed that most people over 45 years old are daily email users and also prefer desktop access to their digital messages.

This suggests that the older generations are still somewhat wary of harnessing mobile devices for various uses, ranging from full-blown transactions to more minor message-checking.

Another aspect unearthed in the report is that the over-45s are also less willing to put their trust in sites which are not officially sanctioned by well-known retail brands, meaning that they prefer to click through to landing pages that they recognise.

There seems to be a general lack of confidence in the ability of retailers to protect personal information, with 48 per cent of people aged 65 or over saying that they had not become more trusting of major retailers in the wake of the rollout of the stricter data rules associated with the GDPR.

Indeed, there is an extent to which consumers are confused as to how their contact information is passed on to retailers, with two-fifths saying that when they receive branded emails they are generally uncertain of how this connection was made.

Ultimately, it seems that for some consumers, especially those who have experienced e-commerce emerging as a technology over the course of almost three decades, there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the security of the most popular platforms.