MAY - JUNE 2001

Internet Privacy: Do We Have It or Don’t We?

With the continued growth of the Internet, privacy issues continue to be at the forefront of related discussions. The outcomes of these issues could make or break the success of e-commerce and continued growth of the Internet itself. But how private is private enough?

Most people (70 percent) who use the Internet regularly want privacy protection; in fact, privacy is the number one concern of users. Even when site operators claim information exchange on their sites is secure, how confident can users be that this is actually the case? Privacy related to transferring personal data from consumer to site operator (and vice versa) only accounts for part of the concern; how site operators use that data — even share that data — raises other very different issues.

Some argue that consumer information is as safe on the Internet as it is over the telephone. For example, typing your credit card information in and sending it through cyberspace to a site representative at the other end is no different than giving your credit card information to a customer service representative over the telephone. Others share the sentiment expressed by Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy about Internet privacy: "You don’t have any…get over it."