How Internet Users' Privacy Concerns Have Evolved since 2002

  • Authors:
  • Annie I. Antón;Julia B. Earp;Jessica D. Young

  • Affiliations:
  • North Carolina State University;North Carolina State University;North Carolina State University

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Security and Privacy
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

In 2002, the authors established a baseline for Internet users' online privacy values, finding information transfer, notice/awareness, and information storage were the top online privacy concerns. Since this survey, many privacy-related events have occurred, including changes in online trends and the creation of laws, prompting the authors to rerun the survey in 2008 to examine how these events might have affected users' online privacy concerns. In this article, they discuss the 2008 survey, which revealed that US Internet users' top three privacy concerns didn't change over the course of six years, although their level of concern did. The authors also examine differences in privacy concerns between US and international respondents. The Web extra groups the survey statements according to six dimensions of privacy concerns based on the following classifications—personalization, notice/awareness, information transfer, information collection, information storage, and access/participation.