“More than 90 percent of respondents called online privacy a “really” or “somewhat” important issue,…”

“More than 90 percent of respondents called online privacy a “really” or “somewhat” important issue, according to the survey of more than 1,000 Americans conducted by TRUSTe, an organization that monitors the privacy practices of Web sites of companies like I.B.M., Yahoo and WebMD for a fee.”

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Concern Rises Over Behavioral Targeting and Ads - NYTimes.com

Rafer sez:
At Lookery, we’re obsessed with keeping Personally Identifiable Information out of our system, but this is inane. A very high fraction of Americans are concerned with their weight — not many are willing to do much about it. The useful question isn’t whether people are worried, it’s whether their actions will change based on that concern. Look to voting turnouts for the answer.

The level of privacy-reinforcing action described in the article is reflected in no population I’ve ever heard of. Where were these questions asked?


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  • karlbunyan
    I agree - it does seem rather unrealistic. "Eleven percent used a proxy server to mask the Internet address." Really? I don't even know that eleven percent of techies will have done this. Unless of course the questions are asked in a certain way and the output is inferred. AOL users are generally behind a proxy, so anyone who puts "AOL" down as their ISP is "masking their address". To turn the methodology on its head, ask users whether they'd prefer not to see irrelevant ads and I think you'll find that 100% are in favour of behavioural targeting.

    All that notwithstanding, I think your point of "whether their actions will change based on that concern" is the main thing to keep in mind with these kinds of surveys.
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