Web Users Say They Still Don't Trust Net Privacy
By Art Kramer
STAFF WRITER
The most frequently cited reason why Web users refuse
to supply personal information requested on Web sites is that they don't
know how the information will be used, a new survey reports.
Seven in 10 Web users who refused to give information
or gave false information did so because of this fear, according to the
sixth GVU's 6th WWW
Survey of Web users, compiled by the Georgia Institute of Technology.
"Data privacy issues are the ones we see the most
concern about," said Georgia Tech graduate student Colleen Kehoe.
"We see it mentioned more and more often online. In this survey we
really wanted to clarify some of the answers we got last time. We wanted
to find out why people aren't registering on Web sites. We found that most
people don't trust the entities that are collecting the information."
Kehoe and Jim Pitkow, also a Tech grad student, probed
for more detail about why more than one in four Web users in the last survey
said they have supplied misleading personal information on Web sites.
The survey drew more than 14,000 responses in the latest
round, conducted in October and November.
Other findings from the survey, which will be released
today: More Web users are paying for access: 66 percent compared with 57
percent in the last survey. Most others get onto the Net at school or on
the job.
And the answer we've all been waiting for: The Web likes
Letterman better than Leno, 3 7percent to 14 percent.
Some pollsters have criticized the survey because respondents
are not contacted at random. By gathering so many responses, the survey
compensates for biases that might be introduced, Pitkow says.