Most Americans lack information about online privacy but prefer strict protections, including...
Most Americans lack information about online privacy but prefer strict protections, including a Do Not Track (DNT) feature, said a new study (http://xrl.us/bntez6) by researchers at the Center for Law and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley and…
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funded “as part of an unrestricted research gift” by Nokia, which produces Microsoft Windows smartphones among others. The same researchers -- Chris Hoofnagle, Jennifer Urban and Su Li -- earlier this year did a similar privacy survey on mobile payments, also funded by Nokia (CD April 26 p6). Microsoft recently began including DNT by default in Internet Explorer 10 as a part of the “Express Settings” options in Windows 8. The new study, which consisted of surveying 1,203 adult Internet users, found that 60 percent of respondents prefer a DNT option that prevents websites from collecting any information about its users, and 20 percent prefer a DNT option that blocks advertisements from appearing on websites. For websites that offer content and services for free, the study found, 40 percent of respondents knew that websites can sell information collected from users; 25 percent of respondents thought free websites had to obey a user’s request to delete data about that user, and 42 percent didn’t know. Based on the desire for increased privacy and the lack of benefit derived from online ads -- the study found 30 percent of respondents said they sometimes or often find ads useful, and 14 percent sometimes or often click on the ads -- “most consumers want Do Not Track to mean exactly that: do not collect information that allows companies to track them across the Internet,” the study said. At the same time, the study said, “the advertising industry has argued for systematically weakening what ‘Do Not Track’ means, and has retreated from earlier, stronger promises to limit tracking.” These two attitudes put consumers and advertisers “at an impasse on privacy,” the study’s authors wrote, and the business model of collecting ad revenue through targeted ads that require online tracking “threatens to prompt a strong consumer backlash.” To solve this, the study said, advertisers should consider “alternative models that would allow highly targeted ads without creating dossiers of Internet behavior held by third parties,” and “regulators could put into place consumer-protective rules that could be implemented through some of these models.”