Many people in the United States would like to control the information companies can obtain about them online. Yet when presented with a series of true-false questions about how digital devices and services track users, most Americans had trouble answering them, according to a report released Tuesday by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
The report analyzed the results of a data privacy survey that included more than 2,000 adults in the United States. Very few of those surveyed said they trusted the way online services handled their personal data.
The survey also assessed people’s knowledge of how apps, websites and digital devices can collect and disclose information about people’s health, TV viewing habits and doorbell camera videos. Although many understood how companies can track their emails and website visits, most seemed unaware that there are only limited federal protections for the types of personal data online services can collect about consumers.
Seventy-seven percent of the participants answered nine or fewer of the 17 true-false questions correctly, which is equivalent to an F grade, according to the report. Only one person received an A grade, for correctly answering 16 of the questions. No one answered all correctly.
Americans struggle to answer questions about online tracking practices and privacy policies.
Researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania asked 2,014 people in the United States a series of true-false statements. The correct answers are in bold.
Most people correctly understood some of the ways companies can track your online activities…
…but they often misunderstood the limited role the federal government plays in regulating tracking practices online.
The survey results expose a yawning knowledge gap among Americans as the Federal Trade Commission is poised to curb companies’ online tracking of consumers, or, as regulators have dubbed it, “commercial surveillance.” And the report could bolster the regulators’ agenda, as it highlights weaknesses in a framework that for decades has served as the foundation for online privacy regulation in the United States.
That longstanding approach is known as “notice and consent.” It generally allows online services to freely collect, use, retain, share, and sell a great deal of detail about individual consumers, as long as the companies first notify users of their data practices and obtain user consent. .
The report adds to a growing body of research suggesting that the notice and consent approach has become outdated. Researchers and regulators say apps and sites often use long and sometimes unintelligible privacy policies to push people to accept tracking practices they may not understand. These critics say that “notice and consent” practices for online services can prevent informed consent.
“Genuine consent requires that people have knowledge about commercial data mining practices, as well as a belief that they can do something about it,” the Annenberg School report said. “Americans don’t have any.”
Seventy-nine percent of those surveyed said they had “little control over what marketers” could learn about them online, while 73 percent said they didn’t have “the time to keep up with the ways to control the information that companies” had about them.
“The big takeaway here is that consent is broken, totally broken.” Jose Turow, a media studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was the lead author of the report said in an interview. “The general idea that consent, whether implicit or explicit, is the solution to this sea of data collection is dead wrong, and that’s the bottom line.”
Some prominent regulators agree.
“When faced with technologies that are increasingly critical to navigating modern life, users often lack a real set of alternatives and cannot reasonably forgo using these tools,” said Lina M. Khan, president of the Federal Trade Commission. in a speech last year.
In the talk, Ms Khan proposed a “type of new paradigm” that could place “substantive limits” on consumer tracking.
Leigh Freund, executive director of the Network Advertising Initiative, a digital advertising industry group, said that while the “notice and consent” approach was “outdated in its application in many respects,” it could still be a useful tool “alongside with reasonable limits on the collection and use of data, particularly with respect to sensitive data”.
He added that his trade group supported a current effort in Congress to pass a comprehensive federal consumer privacy law that would place significant limits on data use “while protecting the benefits of data-driven advertising to consumers, small businesses, and the economy.”
Americans want control of their data, but they don’t trust the companies.
Researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania asked 2,014 people in the United States about their feelings toward control of their personal data and the privacy trade-offs consumers face online.
The survey results challenge a data-for-services argument that the tech industry has long used to justify tracking consumers and avoiding government caps: Consumers are free to use a host of convenient digital tools. as long as they agree. allow apps, sites, ad technology, and marketing analytics companies to track your online activities and use your personal information.
But the new report suggests that many Americans aren’t taking up the industry’s offers.
Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed said they didn’t think it was fair that a store could monitor their online activity if they logged into the retailer’s Wi-Fi. And 61 percent indicated that they thought it was unacceptable for a store to use their personal information to improve the services they received from the store.
Only a small minority, 18 percent, said they didn’t care what companies learned about them online.
