Net users lower guard too easily

INTERNET users (or customers for most things, truth be told) typically claim to be deeply concerned about protecting their privacy and personal data from grasping corporations, but their behaviour almost never matches up to their words.

Unobtrusively exploiting this gulf between intentions and actions has therefore long been a successful strategy for consumer-focused internet and technology companies, particularly those dependent upon advertising.

Given the prominent role of the internet in all types of well-publicised invasions of privacy and related embarrassments over the past few years, you might expect consumer web users these days to display more caution than they did in the past.

Apparently not, according to a recent survey of 1000 British internet users by America Online, the ailing but not-dead-yet internet service provider turned portal.

AOL asked the questions about privacy, while surveying the attitude of its users to more closely targeted advertisements. As is usually the case in such polls, the vast majority of respondents claimed to be very conscious about privacy, and said they carefully guarded personal details.

No fewer than 84 per cent of the consumers declared they would not give away details of their income online, but when asked about their income a few questions later, 89 per cent were willing to give AOL exactly the data most previously said they wouldn't dream of revealing.

"Our research identified a gap between what people say and what they do when it comes to protecting sensitive information online," AOL chief privacy officer Jules Polonetsky said.

Well, indeed. Of course it's possible that some (perhaps many) respondents believed that answering a question about which of a series of income brackets they fell into was not the same as providing a precise earnings figure. It's also possible that some (perhaps many) provided false answers.

Possible, but not as likely, as the simpler explanation that most people using the internet still don't quite realise that when they provide personal data, make transactions or interact with others, the resulting information is usually captured and retained, sometimes indefinitely.

Nor has it yet sunk in that an increasing number of internet firms of all shapes and sizes are staking their future on the ability to unearth and then link disparate kinds and sources of data into a more coherent profile of an individual consumer.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily imply that the resulting profile is attached to an identifiable real-world person (although in many cases it is).

Nor should it be assumed that the way these profiles are used - typically to target online ads more accurately, up to now - is harmful, although it is easy to see how they might serve the interests of the compiling entity rather than the individual profiled.

AOL said its survey showed that the more that people understood about the nature and risks of online privacy violations, the less concerned they were about them.

AOL commissioned the polling as part of a push to raise awareness of the privacy implications of closer behavioural targeting of ads, which Polonetsky admitted harboured risks.

"Personalising content and delivering relevant advertising online will only succeed for consumers and for advertisers if it is done in a trustworthy and transparent manner.

"In addition, business and government will need to offer approaches recognising that at certain times personalisation and data use will be welcomed, and in other cases, users will demand limits on the use of their data."

That seems a reasonable assumption, and probably accurately represents what internet users say when they are asked. Whether such theoretical "demands" have anything to do with what web users actually do is, as ever, entirely another question.