Study Highlights Consumers

Study Highlights Consumers' Privacy Anxiety

  • By Sydny Shepard
  • Jan 14, 2016

Americans are willing to share sensitive information with businesses in the name of safety and efficiency, a new study has found. But they are less likely to exchange person details in return for promotions or advertising, especially when those details reveal their personal location.

The Pew Research Center has found in recent years that users of mobile and desktop computers are anxious about online privacy. The nonprofit’s newest study aimed to learn whether anxiety was dependent on a specific scenario.

The Pew researchers found that an internet users’ anxiety was completely dependent upon what they were doing on the web.

Privacy concerns are more “case-by-case than driven by broad principles,” Pew’s director of Internet, Science and Technology Research, Lee Rainie said.

The report revealed a gap between the public and the tech industry. For instance, there are several home automation systems that seek to connect items in the home, thermostats, light bulbs, garage doors, into a system that would collect data to coordinate their operations. The report showed that the public attitude towards a “smart home” could limit the success of such products.

Over half of 416 U.S. adults surveyed by the researchers said they would find it “acceptable” if their office installed security cameras equipped with facial recognition technology to combat a growing theft problem and a similar percentage said it would be “acceptable” for a doctor to upload health records to a vendor that helped scheduled doctor visits online. Just under half found it “acceptable” for a grocery store to track their purchases and sell the data in exchange for a free loyalty card.

However, two-thirds of respondents said they would not be comfortable with an auto insurance company placing a tracking device in their car to monitor their speed and location in return for discounts that rewarded safe driving. More than half of the respondents deemed it “unacceptable” to offer a home sensor that could help them reduce their energy costs if it could monitor when people were at home and how they moved from room to room.

The report concludes as researchers learn that location information was uppermost in consumers’ minds. “Cars and homes are, for most people, sanctuaries; places where they expect to be private, not monitored, and have their personal information fed into a system.” Rainie said.

About the Author

Sydny Shepard is the Executive Editor of Campus Security & Life Safety.

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