A New Internet Privacy Law?

New York Times. "A New Internet Privacy Law?" March 19, 2011: 22.

This is an editorial discussing the new push for privacy regulations by the government, specifically the Obama Administration, John Kerry in the senate, and John McCain. There is some support from companies such as Microsoft for this endeavor, but advertisers are still lobbying to keep the free trade aspect of the internet as it exists now. The outpouring of interest and support for some type of privacy standards seems to be outweighing the efforts of advertisers, yet the question remains about whether the proposed standards will be enough to make a difference. One possible solution that Kerry proposes is to allow companies to write their own privacy plans and submit them to the FTC, but one has to wonder how effective this will be given the overcomplexity of companies’ privacy policies now.

United States Moving Toward Online Privacy Rules

"United States Moving Toward Online Privacy Rules." Information Management 45, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 2011): 12-12

This is a news piece from an information technology journal that outlines how the United States government, specifically the Commerce Department and the Federal Trade Commission, are in the midst of developing privacy standards to help consumers protect their on and offline privacy. The article discusses how separate reports by the two agencies will be presented with their recommendations, such as “do not track” options for websites. The Obama administration is supporting and managing these efforts by putting together a task force and is expected to receive bi-partisan support as escalating concerns over online privacy have surfaced in recent years.

The European Commission is simultaneously working on standards to protect internet users’ personal information by revamping the European Union’s (EU) data protection rules. Their new laws are an endeavor to update outdated laws from 1995 and include rules such as: clarifying to users how their information will be used; allowing users to delete data; sending users alerts when their information has been misused.

This is current information on the status of online privacy standards in the United States. Although it is not a scholarly research article, it presents factual and relevant news on the subject of online privacy and needs to be mentioned in my research report.

Freedom of Privacy: Anonymous Data Collection with Respondent-Defined Privacy Protection

Kumar, Rajeev, Ram Gopal, and Robert Garfinkel. "Freedom of Privacy:Anonymous Data Collection with Respondent-Defined Privacy Protection." INFORMS Journal on Computing 22, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 471-481.

This article explores how various organizations collecting survey data on individuals are creating wide-spread privacy concerns. The authors illustrate how existing methods for data collection are lacking in efficiency and privacy. They propose two ways of handling data that will respond to these concerns.

The article offers several examples of how customers’ privacy is breached, including various ways that data collected from customers is matched with personally identifiable information as well as hackers obtaining the information.

The authors two suggestions for privacy collection involve: allowing individuals to create their own privacy levels and then base data collection on those profiles and the utilization of a new anonymous data collection technique whereby the data collected can’t be matched with the users’ personally identifiable information. The first approach which allows individuals the ability to choose their own privacy levels is a straightforward approach that ensures privacy throughout the lifecycle of the transaction. The second approach, the use of the authors’ anonymous data collection technique called KGG Data Collection, is a complex data collection system whereby users send and receive encrypted and decrypted messages involving their data. The paper attempts to solve the problem of privacy issues, created by agencies who collect survey data, by the creation of a new system of data collection described in this article by the authors.

The authors present a sound, well-researched, and detailed account of their data collection techniques, as well as a literature review comparing and contrasting previous techniques. The article only uses previous literature to provide evidence supporting their hypotheses and their software development. However, because they are developers, they are able to create a new system themselves instead of just discussing the possibilities of what could be done.

The article is somewhat relevant to my research project because it presents a unique approach to solving the problem of online privacy which is developed by the authors themselves. They detail their development of their anonymous data collection technique using scientific math and algorithms, probably written for an audience of engineers and software developers. Their technique seems somewhat complex and cumbersome, but it does provide a solid way for online users to ensure their data remains private, which seems to be at a premium these days.

Privacy, Trust, and Self-Disclosure Online

Joinson, Adam, Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Tom Buchanan, and Carina Schofield. "Privacy, Trust, and Self-Disclosure Online." Human-Computer Interaction 25, no. 1 (Jan-Mar 2010): 1-24.

The article starts off discussing how disclosure, required in order to utilize various internet websites, creates privacy issues for online users. The functionality at the heart of many social websites requires users to disclose personal information to take advantage of the functionality of the sites. Some technology ,at its essence, discloses information about users – one such example is uploading photographs that have location information connected to them. Other examples are websites and online databases that share information, in some cases disseminating personal information about individuals without their knowledge.

Although the authors provide evidence that companies who address privacy concerns are generally more successful, they also maintain that there isn’t an irrefutable link between individuals’ concerns about privacy and their behavior online. The authors attribute this partly to the fact that users seldom read or understand privacy policies, and the privacy policies themselves are not user friendly.

The authors also discuss trust and assert that the willingness to disclose information on line is dependent on how much the individual trusts the party who they are disclosing information to. Some proof in this section of the article was rather outdated, surprisingly from the 1970’s and 1980’s. More recent proof was offered, though, and the authors outline a couple of relationships relative to online privacy and self-disclosure, claiming that the correlation between the two factors is mediated by trust. This is interpreted to mean that there isn’t a direct relationship between privacy and behavior. Instead, the two relationships hypothesized to exist are between privacy and trust and then between trust and behavior.

The authors perform two studies to test their theories, one that measures dispositional privacy, perceived privacy, and trust; the second one is an experiment whereby privacy and trust are manipulated and tested to determine if there is a moderation effect.

As a result of these studies, the authors find a way to measure the relationship between users’ privacy concerns and their behavior, though in the past there was no conclusive evidence reflecting a correlation between these two variables. The results of the two studies also explain why, even though individuals may seem very concerned about privacy, their online behavior may not necessarily reflect that. The authors maintain this is because an individual’s general attitude towards online privacy may not be indicative of their attitude and behavior in dealing with specific situations they may confront online. Further results show that a strong relationship between privacy and trust exists illustrated by a negative correlation between the two variables, further demonstrating why specific situations cause users to behave in contrast to their general attitudes towards privacy.

The authors recommend, for organizations and individuals, avoiding extremes on either end of the spectrum for these two elements - privacy and trust.

The article presented very substantial evidence and data analyses for the hypotheses presented. It also exposed the complexities involved in a study attempting to understand computer users’ online behavior. Instead of trying to oversimplify their research, the authors take on what they believe to be complicated and indirect relationships between privacy and online behavior and discover the variables they originally thought were not correlated could, in fact, be measured.

This article is very relevant to my study and provides new evidence in my literature review that trust is a major factor in determining people’s behavior online – and that trust is very situational.

Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns

Fogel, Joshua, and Elham Nehmad. "Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns." Computers in Human Behavior (Elsevier) 25, no. 1 (January 2009): 153-160

This article examines risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns among college students relative to social networking websites, mainly Facebook and MySpace. The authors pull research data from many other studies to weave into their conclusions.

The authors first examine usage statistics and behavior for a few networking websites, providing data for issues such as privacy concerns on Facebook – for example, students’ attitudes towards a stranger knowing where they live and being able to view their class schedule.

A literature review was performed, gathering statistics from various studies on a number of different relevant issues to the study, the first one being “risk taking” behavior among college students. Some of the risk taking behaviors reviewed were: risky sex while in high school; substance abuse while in high school. The results revealed that there are distinct gender differences towards risk taking behavior, with women being inclined to participate in less risk taking behaviors than men. Other studies reviewed included trust among college students and privacy among college students. The authors used social contract theory as a framework for their own research. “This theory posits that consumers assume an implied social contract when exchanging information in a transaction (Pan & Zinkhan, 2006) (Fogel and Nehmad 2009)”.

The authors’ premise is that young people trying things for the first time are more likely to be involved with risk taking behavior, so the study seeks to correlate college students’ risk taking behavior to their use of social networking websites. They also did a number of trust and privacy measurements related to the students’ usage of the social networking websites in addition to measuring gender differences in the data.

Their own study consisted of 205 participants from a four year undergraduate commuting inner city college taken via a convenience sample of students approached in various public areas of the school, including the cafeteria and the library. They had a 96.2% response rate to their survey. They measured attitudes on Likert scales, including: risk averseness scale, consumer trust scale, privacy behavior scale, time pressure scale, privacy concern scale, and similar scales. Using various statistical analyses methods, they tabulated the results concluding that students who had profiles on social networking websites also participated in more risk taking behaviors. In relation to gender, men participate in more risky behavior than women, therefore they are more likely to reveal more personal information on line. The authors recommend that there be some sort of filtering system so that individuals creating an online profile are made aware of the privacy issues before being allowed to sign up.

The methodology and data analysis seemed very exacting and relevant to the study, and the literature review was very comprehensive. The demographics represented a good proportion of gender, race, and immigrant status. The authors used ANOVA to compare individuals using social networking profiles to those who do not, in addition to a number of other tests to compare and contrast the data.

On first glance, the conclusion and recommendations of the study appear to be somewhat week – the authors recommend that certain information be disclosed by social networking websites before individuals are allowed to create a profile, one must consider the year when this study was done, 2008. Privacy attitudes and adoption of social networking websites have radically changed since then, with social networking websites such as Facebook increasing their membership levels by huge percentages. This alone is an indicator that privacy attitudes are quickly changing and becoming more relaxed as time goes on.

This study is relevant to my research because it looks at another aspect of how people's desire to enjoy and utilize the benefits of the World Wide Web superseded the relative importance to them of on-line privacy. This provides some evidence that, at least initially, the risk takers forged our culture’s adoption and acceptance into social networking (one example of online usage related to privacy), relaxing our privacy standards as a result.

Holy Grail of Targeting is Fuel for Privacy Battle

Learmonth, Michael. "Holy Grail of Targeting is Fuel for Privacy Battle." Advertising Age 81, no. 12 (March 2010): 1-21.

This article discusses the newest trend in marketing whereby marketers are taking off-line information from individuals and merging it with their online information to more specifically target them. Aperture, a division of Datran Media, is able to obtain information on individuals from such companies as Experian and Nielsen and combine that information with Datran’s e-mail database of individuals. Although the personally identifiable information is removed, the information that remains paints a very detailed and accurate profile of an individual, allowing marketers to target to specific interests and attributes.

The Federal Trade Commission is having hearings about how much information should be allowed to be used for targeting, yet all of this seems to be up in the air because it is already happening and people are willingly volunteering more information online.

This article is mainly an informative news piece about the latest in marketing trends from an advertising journal. It explains the subject matter in a broad brush manner, so it would be beneficial to get more detailed and specific information on this subject with research to support it.

Although it isn’t a research article, it is somewhat helpful to my research topic, as it is important to know what is possible relative to practices involving online privacy and what kinds of privacy concerns exist right now.

Privacy is the Problem

Ku, Raymond Shih Ray. “Privacy is the Problem.” Widener Law Journal 19, no. 3(2010): 873-891.

This article discusses how the government and the Supreme Court of the Unites States loosely interpret privacy through the Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The article takes the perspective that “privacy is the problem” – as illustrated in ways that the United States government attempts to convince the American public how necessary various types of surveillance are to protect our national security, enabling them to position privacy concerns as less salient issues.

The author, Ku, starts the article by citing two recent and relevant examples of the government infringing on individual’s privacy: a school recording student’s behavior through their laptop cameras, even at home in their own bedrooms; increasing government surveillance of telephone and electronic communications. Ku emphasizes that the government is increasing levels of surveillance on Americans in every manner under the guise of protecting national security; to make this possible, the Supreme Court hides behind various interpretations of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court uses the Constitution to limit privacy of individuals by loosely and semantically defining it from the perspective of how the framers of the constitution originally defined it; furthermore, they use the original language to differentiate invasions of privacy using new technology advances in contrast to the original definition, which involved invasions of privacy relative to that time period (such as rummaging through drawers, trespassing on
property, and the like). This allows the court to determine that invasions of privacy made possible by newer technological advancements do not fall within the realm of the Constitution, effectively allowing these types of privacy invasions to continue, unchecked, and deteriorate citizens’ rights of privacy.

Ku describes this in the following quote from the article:

“Ironically, privacy is also the problem for those interested in protecting privacy. Rather than treating privacy as an underlying interest protected by the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court of the United States currently uses it as a limiting principle, narrowing the scope and circumstances in which the Amendment applies. For most of the twentieth century, the right of privacy protected by the Amendment was only implicated when the search conducted by the government invaded privacy in a manner equivalent to the types of searches that troubled the Framers of the Constitution." (Ku 2010)

Ku goes on in the article to summarize various cases dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that illustrate the true intent of the Fourth Amendment, which Ku argues is to limit governmental power and authority. The cases are mainly centered around government conducted searches of citizens. He further provides evidence that the government, through rhetoric and semantic language, has made itself the main arbiter and decision maker of what is
appropriate regarding its’ own actions related to the privacy of American citizens.

Ku concludes by stating, “the only legitimate authority for determining the reasonableness of any exercise of governmental power is the people themselves through the Constitution or through their legislative representatives by statute” (Ku 2010). He affirms that the practices mentioned earlier in the article, such as the case of the school spying on students via their laptop webcams is completely contrary to the principles guiding the Fourth Amendment, revealing
his irony intended in the statement, “privacy is the problem”.

This article was an excellent analysis, using legal cases, statutes, and the most sacred of principles governing our country – the Constitution, describing how government has increasingly overstepped its’ boundaries relative to privacy rights of American citizens by interpreting the principles guiding the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution to serve its’ own ends (mainly to increase it’s power). Ku uses historical documents and legal decisions to offer
additional proof to support his argument.

This source is different than the other sources I used because it is not a typical research report, broken up into sections described methodology and other research terminology employed within it. Ku, however, did apply valid research; using textual analysis, he looked at a chronology of cases in history related to the Fourth Amendment of the constitution as proof of the actual intent of the Fourth Amendment in contrast to how those cases and the Fourth Amendment are actually being interpreted by the Supreme Court today.

Although this article did not discuss the internet and the World Wide Web explicitly, the subject matter relates to the overall topic of privacy concerns of individuals relative to my research topic. It specifically mentions increasing government surveillance of electronic communications of individuals, which provides additional evidence that individuals’ right to privacy on-line is decreasing without their knowledge of it.

Privacy and the Quantum Internet

Lloyd, Seth. "Privacy and the Quantum Internet." Scientific American 301, no. 4 (October 2009): 80-84.

This article discusses a new technology, which, in the future, could offer people true privacy while surfing the net. Currently, search engines such as Google can track individuals’ internet searches, and they do so as part of their business model to individually target advertising. Even when users’ searches are intended to be anonymous, there are ways that search engines can track the user’s behavior with identification numbers that reveal their on-line searches and behavior. The author, Seth Lloyd, introduces a new technology that promises a private version of the internet called the Quantum internet in this article.

This quote from the article explains how the technology works:

"The ability of quantum physics to supply complete privacy stems from a simple fact: systems in the quantum realm (which includes anything from elementary particles to molecules) can exist in multiple states. At any particular time, an atom can be in several different places; a particle of light, or photon, can be polarized both vertically and horizontally; an electron's magnetic moment can point up and down, and so on. As a consequence, whereas classical (as opposed to quantum) data bits register either the value 0 or the value 1, quantum bits can register 0 and 1 at the same time. Also, whenever a quantum bit takes on the values 0 and 1 simultaneously, you cannot make an exact copy of that quantum bit, and any attempt to do so will change the state of the bit. This rule, known as the no-cloning theorem, also applies to strings of quantum bits, which, for example, can represent words or sentences. As a consequence, someone eavesdropping on a quantum channel--typically an optical fiber carrying photons in multiple polarization states--will not be able to "listen" to the communication without disturbing it, thus revealing the intrusion." (Lloyd, 2009)

There are many challenges presented that face the developers of this technology, but they estimate a version of this type of network could potentially become available within five to ten years. Google has expressed some interest in it if they can modify their business model to accommodate this type of technology, allowing users to do private searches. Perhaps users seeking privacy may have to pay for their internet searches in contrast to the free version of the internet which is not private.

In conclusion, the technology has already been created and tested in a laboratory setting, so this could become a reality in the future – the technology has the potential to revolutionize the internet.

This is an interesting article geared towards engineers and programmers, yet written in language simple enough for the average techie to understand. There really hasn’t been any user testing done on this technology yet, as it is so new and still in the development phase. The article is written from the perspective of introducing and describing this new technology with its’ obstacles to overcome and potential future benefits to realize.

The article is somewhat relative to my research topic in two areas: the article offers some validation to the idea that the reason the internet is not private is because of the current business model it is built on, which specifically relies on the knowledge of peoples’ internet searches and behavior while using the internet/world wide web; it also offers evidence that technology could be developed that offers users privacy while they’re on-line, if developers and companies decide that investing in and developing this type of technology is worthwhile for them.

What’s Wrong with Online Privacy Policies?

Pollach, Irene. "What's Wrong with Online Privacy Policies?" Communications of the ACM 50, no. 9 (September 2007): 103-108.

The article relates users’ responses to online privacy concerns to websites’ inadequate and confusing privacy policies. Pollach underscores current users’ practices of falsifying information and refusing to provide information to companies in order to protect their privacy. She also reflects on the companies’ concern about these practices hindering their ability to properly market and deliver good service to those customers.

Pollack points out flaws and outlines ways that companies can improve their online privacy policies in order to allay their customers’ privacy concerns and build trust with them. Relative to existing privacy policies, she outlines some ways in which they are deficient in the following quote:

“Internet users have been found not to read online privacy policies because they find them too legalistic and therefore difficult to understand [9]. Another study has assessed privacy policies by means of readability formulae and found that readers would require at least some college education to understand the complex words and sentence structures in these texts [1]” (Pollach 2007, 2).

Pollach selected 50 popular and successful websites in order to conduct her research chosen from Alexa.com for their traffic rankings. She carried out two separate studies, one to ascertain what the companies’ privacy policies do say and one to determine what the policies don’t say about how they handle consumers’ information. She used a range of familiar company names, from Internet Service Providers like Yahoo to travel companies such as Expedia.com to collect her data. Her research involved assessing the ability to answer 29 questions on corporate data handling relative to users’ privacy concerns using the language in the longest privacy policies from the sample. The results showed that 39.4% of the questions couldn’t be answered because the answer could not be found in the privacy policies. It is worth noting also that many companies exhibit a “privacy seal” on their website which gives customers a feeling of security about their privacy. The results of this study showed that companies that had privacy seals had only slightly better privacy policies than companies that didn’t have the seals.

Less than a third of companies disclosed their data handling policies. Pollach was shocked to find out how many companies don’t disclose any information at all, including how they share customers’ information with third parties. She found a number of other activities that companies participate in to share customers’ data such as e-mail addresses which further confirmed her suspicions.

The language of the privacy policies was analyzed in order to provider a deeper understanding of how they are worded. “The analysis of the language of privacy policies was based on critical linguistics [6], a method that seeks to uncover how authors of texts use language to construct their own versions of reality. In the context of privacy policies, this “version of reality” refers to how companies present their data handling practices to their readers. The goal of this analysis was to determine why privacy policies are difficult to understand and why readers do not consider them worth reading” (Pollach 2007, 105-106).

Several aspects of the language in the privacy policies was evaluated, and it appears as though the companies used various techniques in the wording of them to make them more palatable to the customer, to potentially confuse the customer as to the true intent, or to possibly hide the real facts. Pollach does admit, however, that she can’t be certain the companies’ intent is to deliberately hide or shield the truth. The purpose of the privacy policies seems to mainly defend possible litigation threats against the companies.

In conclusion, Pollach recommends that online companies address the ambiguous wording in their privacy policies using structure that makes the language more easily read and understood by every customer. Some suggestions she makes are to put the salient details of the policy in a table to make it easy for customers to look up specific topics. In addition, she recommends breaking the document up into smaller paragraphs of information to make it easier to read. Overall, Pollach feels strongly that IT departments of online companies need to be clear with their customers about exactly how their using their personal data.

This was a very detailed article, looking at online privacy through a microscope, in essence. I appreciated the authors’ analysis of the language of the privacy policies as a way of specifically defining their inadequacies and providing evidence confirming customers’ privacy concerns in addition to pointing out ways that companies can allay those concerns. Her study was very exacting, and the intra-coder reliability pertaining to the coding of the 50 privacy policies was 98.84%.

This source will fit in well with the rest of my research and address the privacy issue on a much more granular level than other sources I’ve gathered so far. It takes the mystery out of the term privacy and puts the onus back onto the companies that attempt to shield the public from knowing the truth.

Consumers’ Understanding of Privacy Rules in the Marketplace

Turow, Joseph, Michael Hennessy, and Amy Bleakley. "Consumers’ Understanding of Privacy Rules in the Marketplace." Journal of Consumer Affairs 42, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 411-424.

This article discusses how consumers’ lack of knowledge of online privacy rules, pertaining to web sites in particular, causes them to be less concerned about online privacy therefore causing them to do less about protecting their privacy online. He cites quotes and information from several other studies to confirm these theories. One quote that I found relevant is “the online marketplace is organized such that consumers drop their sensitivity toward protecting their information to ‘‘pursue other goals that render privacy less salient than other attributes’’ (Nehf 2007, 355)”(Turow 2008,1). He provides evidence of this in other studies done reflecting that consumers’ knowledge of websites’ privacy rules is lacking in many respects. The authors further emphasize that due to the lack of consumers’ demanding greater privacy online as a result of their lack of knowledge; there is a need for the government to create regulations to protect consumers.

The authors review various arguments proposed in literature that either defend or refute the need for government regulations in this area, maintaining on one side of the argument that the American marketplace should remain free and open as it has been traditionally. On the other hand, arguments are presented stressing that websites are not set up t o allow consumers to be able to effectively make choices about their privacy while utilizing the benefits of the website. Many websites’ privacy policies are obscure and misleading. Similar problems are cited in the article regarding privacy notices and regulations issued by financial services and health insurance companies which give consumers a false sense of security regarding the privacy of their personal information.

The authors did a study using surveys to find out what knowledge internet users possess about online privacy as part of another more comprehensive study. The larger study sought to ascertain peoples’ knowledge levels of how companies legally collect information about them on and offline in addition to testing their knowledge regarding companies’ practices of charging people differently for the same products. The authors employed a nationwide research company using random digit dialing to conduct a 20 minute survey with adults eighteen years or older from 1500 households. The questions tested their knowledge on a variety of different market privacy practices, including those of e-commerce companies, charities, supermarkets, and financial services companies. The demographic statistics collected in the surveys revealed some substantive information. Knowledge of companies’ online and offline privacy practices are affected by the following factors: the more educated an individual is, the more knowledgeable that person is about privacy, with people holding graduate degrees possessing the greatest amount of knowledge; pertaining to age, people in the 50-64 year old age group had the highest amount of knowledge and people in the 18-29 year old age group had the least amount of privacy knowledge; the privacy knowledge level was also correlated to those who responded as having the greatest amount of computer skills. Overall, the results of the study yielded that only a small percentage of the population are very knowledgeable about all of the idiosyncrasies of different markets’ privacy policies

As a result of this study and other research mentioned in this article and beyond, the authors believe there should be regulations enforced regarding online and offline privacy practices. They compare the lack of accurate and specific privacy information available for consumers to review in order to make decisions about their privacy to the issue of nutrition labeling. In comparison, nutrition labeling has relied on customers’ proclivity to purchase food based on the “claims” that are made on the labels instead of looking at the actual nutritional information. Consumer privacy rights are often presented similarly by making misleading “claims” about privacy or by making their privacy information obscure and difficult to comprehend. The authors recommend that consumers be educated about online and offline privacy practices and that the government enforces regulations regarding privacy practices. They further suggest the creation of a labeling system for consumers that is clear and specific about particular organization’s privacy policies, instead of the overly convoluted one that exists now.

This article was an excellent synopsis of a very complex issue regarding understanding consumers’ knowledge about online and offline privacy. It brought to light the lack of a specific system whereby consumers’ could quickly assess how their privacy could be affected by doing business with a particular organization. The authors did a thorough review of literature and studies done on this subject matter and related it to their own research. The methodology they utilized in taking a random sample of internet users was viable, and they had a strong response rate of over 50%. The questions they asked in the survey tested the subjects’ specific knowledge on a wide range of privacy issues. The results confirmed their initial theory that there is a need for strong and clear regulations about privacy for online and offline businesses to follow that consumers can easily comprehend.

This source fits perfectly into the research I’m doing by answering the question, “How has people's desire to enjoy and utilize the benefits of the World Wide Web superseded the relative importance to them of on-line privacy”? The ’how’ in this article is individuals’ lack of knowledge about privacy practices. The authors correct the perception that people are apathetic about online and offline privacy by relating their seeming apathy to a simple lack of knowledge regarding companies’ online and offline privacy policies. Instead of defining what privacy means, the authors highlight current online and offline privacy issues while advocating better and clearer regulations to protect consumers.

Toward a Typology of Internet Users and Online Privacy Concerns

Sheehan, Kim Bartel. "Toward a Typology of Internet Users and Online Privacy Concerns." Information Society 18, no. 1 (January 2002): 21-32.

This article explores the differences in consumers’ attitudes towards privacy online and the concept of privacy in the traditional sense. The author, Sheehan, borrows a topology of traditional consumers developed by another researcher, Alan Westin. Sheehan’s aim is to determine whether online consumers’ can be categorized in the same way as Westin categorized traditional consumers, by dividing them into three distinct groups based on their attitudes towards privacy.

She first examines the literature on this subject and discusses the contextual nature of privacy as well as the definition of privacy, highlighting that the definition depends on the context. People’s attitude towards privacy tends to fluctuate on a sliding scale depending on how much knowledge they have of the concept and what situation they are presented with. Some studies done in the late 1990’s suggest that people’s desire to enjoy the benefits of e-commerce outweigh their privacy concerns. In addition, those same studies uncovered that peoples’ increased familiarity and experience using the internet resulted in them having less concern over privacy issues. She touches on these studies as part of her literature review and in contrast to her own research.

Her study of internet users’ attitudes about privacy was done using an e-mail survey sent to 3,724 people, where she presented the participants with scenarios related to online privacy. She also collected demographic data and information about their computer usage. She used a probability sampling method of randomly selected internet users for her sample that could potentially be generalized to the larger population. Using a 7 point bipolar scale with numbers ranging from 1 to 7 indicating levels of concern between not concerned and highly concerned, the respondents were asked to choose their level of concern relative to the various privacy related scenarios that were presented to them.

In analyzing the results of her survey, Sheehan found that her findings were much different than that of Westin. This resulted in her further dividing the topology of internet users into four groups instead of three, veering from Westin’s idea of using three. The four groups she identified were the following: unconcerned Internet users, circumspect Internet users, wary Internet users, and alarmed Internet users.

Overall, the study revealed that the majority of internet users were concerned about privacy at the time when this study was done in 2002. Sheehan found that most internet users could be classified as “pragmatic” about privacy denoting that their attitude about privacy online depended on the particular situation they were in. Additionally, the demographic information allowed her to discover that people who are more educated tend to more concerned about privacy; younger peoples’ attitudes towards privacy are more pragmatic; people over the age of 45 tend to be split on this issue, with half of them being very concerned about online privacy and half of them not concerned at all.

Sheehan suggests future studies including one that would determine how knowledgeable people are about protecting themselves online. One of the purposes of this study was to provide a structure and a baseline of knowledge in order to conduct future studies on peoples’ attitudes towards internet privacy.

Sheehan has done a very thorough job with her research, detailing every aspect of her methodology and documenting all of the challenges that she faced. Her literature review is very detailed, and she attempts to explore the definitions of traditional privacy in contrast to online privacy. In this attempt, she also expertly and creatively redefines ideas about privacy through well chose references from her literature review as in the description of privacy as a “continuum”. Her data analysis is very meticulous and appears to be completely unbiased, as she is not looking for a particular “reaction” from her respondents but aims to create a framework to conduct further research studies from. She strives to understand attitudes towards online privacy, the factors that influence those attitudes, and understanding for others in her field.

Although this article could be considered somewhat dated due to its publishing date of 2002, it provides a reference point for understanding how peoples’ attitudes towards online privacy were during that time. One of the objectives for my research paper is to underscore that peoples’ attitudes towards online privacy have become more relaxed. This may be partially due to a lack of knowledge on the subject and partially due to their keen interest in participating in all of the riveting activities that now exist on the web. Their desire to participate in those activities has outweighed their concerns for online privacy. This paper provides substantial evidence that people were fairly concerned about their online privacy in 2002, and it would be interesting to see where things stand now.