Nine in 10 online adults worry about their privacy online, including 45% who always or frequently feel worried, according to TRUSTe. Six in 10 Americans are more concerned about their privacy when using the Internet than they were a year ago. More than nine in 10 U.S. adults (94%) think online privacy is an important issue, and 93% believe businesses have a responsibility to protect their customers’ privacy online.
College graduates are more likely than those with less education to actively avoid buying from businesses that don’t protect their privacy.
More than half of adults (53%) say they don’t completely trust businesses to protect their personal information online.
Mobile Privacy
Protecting privacy while using mobile apps is an area of increasing concern to consumers. Fewer than one in 10 mobile users are willing to share their home addresses, contact lists, web surfing behavior, or specific location with mobile apps.
The majority of Americans who own cell phones consider the data stored on their mobile phones to be as private as (59%) or more private than (19%) the information on their home computers, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley.
Americans are reluctant to loan their phones to others; fewer than one in 10 would “definitely” allow work colleagues, acquaintances, or strangers to borrow their phones, and privacy-related concerns are the top reasons for not wanting to loan mobile phones.
Mobile Marketing Preferences
Most mobile users are wary of sharing the information stored on their phones with marketers. Nearly three quarters of mobile phone owners (74%) say retail stores should not be permitted to call them for marketing purposes after they’ve provided their numbers to a cashier during the checkout process.
Fewer than one in 10 would allow their cell phone providers to use knowledge of their current location to send them tailored ads. Nearly half (46%) believe mobile service providers should not be allowed to keep records of their subscribers’ locations (obtained through phone GPS systems) at all, and another 28% believe they should be able to keep it for less than a year.
Although adults under age 45 are more likely than those 45 and older to use mobile features such as social networking, web browsing, and online gaming, they’re not more comfortable with mobile marketing and use of their personal information. In fact, those under 25 are the most likely age group to consider the data on their phones to be more private than that on their computers (30% feel this way).
Sources: “TRUSTe Privacy Index, Q2 2012 Consumer Confidence Edition,” June 2012, TRUSTe, Dave Deasy, VP Marketing, 835 Market St., Suite 800, Box 137, San Francisco, CA 94103; 415-520-3490; www.truste.com
“Mobile Phones and Privacy,” Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, University of California – Berkeley School of Law, Jennifer Urban, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, 215 Boalt Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720; 510-642-7338; jurban@law.berkeley.edu; www.law.berkeley.edu. Available online at no charge: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2103405
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