Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On December 30, 2015, the Pew Research Center released a report on the results of a recent survey that asked 461 Americans about their feelings toward sharing personal information with companies. The survey found that a “significant minority” of American adults have felt “confused over information provided in company privacy policies, discouraged by the amount of effort needed to understand the implications of sharing their data, and impatient because they wanted to learn more about the information-sharing process but felt they needed to make a decision right away.” When deciding whether or not to share personal information with companies, 50% of the respondents reported they felt confident that they understood what would be done with their personal information, while 47% said they were not confident they understood the repercussions.

The report also highlighted the following findings from the survey:

• Men and women were equally likely to have experienced negative emotions around sharing their personal information.
• Respondents who are better-off and less well-off financially were equally likely to have experienced negative emotions around sharing their personal information.
• Respondents under age 50 were somewhat more likely than those over age 50 to say they have recently been impatient about providing personal information to a company.

The report follows on the heels of a November 2014 Pew Research Center poll which found that 91% of adults “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that they had lost control over how personal information was collected and used by companies.