Age

•  Baby Boomers, or those aged 55+, are more concerned about their data privacy than other generations.

Education

• People with college or advanced degrees are more concerned with data privacy, although it is also a concern for those without a college education.

Income Level

• Those making more than $100,000 per year are slightly more concerned with their data being utilized by social media and tech companies, although over 70% of people in all incomes levels were concerned.

Ethnicity

• Consumers of all ethnicities are likely to be concerned about data privacy, but Blacks and Hispanics are more concerned than Whites about their data being given to law-enforcement officials or utilized for identify fraud.

Gender

• Men and women are equally concerned about data privacy, however, women are more protective of their photos/videos than men.

Location

• People living in the suburbs are the most concerned with data privacy, however, people in rural areas and living in cities were also very concerned (over 70% of people in all categories saying they were concerned).

Research Strategy

Consumer Motivations to Seek Online Data Privacy

•  Fifty-seven percent of online households mention identity theft as a major privacy concern.
• Americans want to avoid Credit/Banking Fraud.
• American consumers are wary of personal data being collected or saved by online services. In addition, they don't believe they have full control over their data.
• Americans are suspicious of their data being collected and used by government agencies.
• There is a fear of a decrease in personal safety due to information they (consumers) post online.
• Various security breaches of major companies such as Equifax, Facebook, and Marriott International have caused some personal data safety concerns.

Consumer Habits for Seeking Online Data Privacy

• Consumers who experience a security breach are more likely to decrease or stop online activities or increase online data privacy to prevent future violations.
•  Fifty-nine percent of Americans enable two-factor authentication for their accounts.
• A few consumers utilize password management apps.
•  More than half of consumers change their privacy settings frequently on their social media accounts.
• More than 40% of consumers have checked to see if their data had been compromised within a 12-month period.
• According to a survey conducted on 1,000 consumers by Akamai in 2018, 71% of the consumers use software to protect their data and manage their online experience.
• More than 50% of consumers wait at least 30 days before sharing their personal information with a brand.

Statistics on Online Privacy

•  Ninety-one percent of Americans believe that they have lost control over their data.
•  Sixty-one percent of Americans want to improve their privacy when they are online.
•  Thirty-six percent of Americans think they have no control over what apps do with their data.
•  Fifth-four percent of Americans worry about how secure their data is and their privacy online.

Insights

Data Collection

• The user's data can be collected if he/she is not using a private browser.

• The common collected information includes the user's location, the type of device he/she is currently using, and the type of advertisements he/she views.
• Additionally, cookies data show who the user is, who are his/her friends, what she/he is interested in, and the locations he/she has visited.
• However, all this can be avoided if the user makes his/her searches private by using private browsers.

Ad Blockers and Tracking Blockers

• Private browsers come with Ads and tracking blockers that provide the user with uninterrupted browsing experience free from interruptions of advertisements. The tracking blocker hides the user's location, hence, private browsing.

• They also allow the user to view pages that are not specifically targeted for him/her. Non-private browsers or search engines like Amazon provide pages that specifically target a certain user based on the information collected by them on the user's search history or interests.
• Private browsers give the user the freedom to search for new things and not just recommendations based on his/her previous searches provided by search engines like Google.

Discriminatory Pricing

• Online retailers are known to vary prices depending on the location of the users and their browsing patterns. T
• The travel industry can use this information to spike airfare to entice users to book immediately and avoid a further increase in prices.
•  Location data can be used to set a high price for people browsing from high-income areas compared to those from low-income areas.
• Private browsers hide the user's location and help him/her avoid unnecessary costs due to data manipulation.

Usage Limits

• Certain websites using cookies can limit user interaction with their content. They limit the number of times a user is allowed on their website based on his/her previous searches and location.
• Private browsing can help the user circumvent the limitations by not accepting cookies and hiding his/her location data, thus overriding the usage limits.

How Attackers Used the Consumer Data

• When the servers of Ashley Madison were hacked, the cybercriminals managed to get information on Tom, a consumer on that website. [5]
• The information the criminals got enabled them to contact Tom and blackmailed him. They requested to be paid or release the data of his affairs to his family.

• Cybercriminals usually target gamers because they know they are not willing to lose all the time and money spent on developing their characters or profiles.
• For example, the creator of the "World of Warcraft" account was hacked twice, and his progress deleted.

Example of how the Government can use the Consumer Data

• Theoretically, the government can use the consumer data gathered to find information about people of interest.
• The government is not prohibited from buying consumer data from websites that have collected data of interest to them.
• The government can use consumers' data to spy on its citizens.

Risk of Consumer Backlash

• While increased access to consumer data and ad targeting have been shown to improve ad performance, there is evidence that tracking consumers to sell products or services may result in consumer backlash.
• This risk is more pronounced now that data breaches, fake news, and creepy ads have increased consumers' awareness of web cookies tracking their every move online.
• A case in point is Target whose targeted coupons for pregnancy-related products drew ire from consumers. For one of its promotions, Target sent these coupons to women it believed to be pregnant. The targeting became controversial because a father inadvertently learned through this coupon that his teenage daughter was expecting.
• Consumers who learn they have been targeted by a brand in unacceptable ways are less likely to trust that brand or engage with that brand.

Risk of Litigation

• Advertisers that track consumers run the risk of litigation as well. Advertisers can land in court and lose money in the process if they are not careful about handling consumer data.

•  Toysmart.com, an online toy retailer that is now bankrupt, was sued by the Federal Trade Commission when it planned to sell off consumer data to the top bidder.
• Advertising network DoubleClick, which monitors Internet users anonymously, was sued as well for planning to match its real-world mailing list with its database of anonymous Internet users.
• Online drugstore More.com was sued by an attorney general for sharing confidential consumer data with third parties even when its privacy policy dictated that it could not do such a thing. One of the attorney general's staff members, after signing up on More.com, was solicited by a contact lens seller (a third party).

Risk of Reduced Ad Effectiveness

• Consumers' heightened awareness of tracking by advertisers could lead to reduced ad performance if it brings about privacy concerns.

• Three researchers from Harvard Business School recently discovered that when consumers learn companies are making inferences about them based on their activity on third-party websites, they feel "intruded upon." Ad effectiveness, in turn, declines.
• According to these researchers, these findings mirror social truths. For consumers, tracking them across websites and making inferences based on this collected data is akin to talking behind their back. If talking behind people's backs is socially unacceptable, then making inferences about people based on their activity on third-party websites is unacceptable as well.
• Ads that disclose to consumers that they have been targeted because of their activity on third-party websites were found to be 24% less effective than ads that disclose to consumers that they have been targeted because of the products they have selected in the past.
• Ads that disclose to consumers that they have been targeted because of inferences were found to be 17% less effective than ads that disclose to consumers that they have been targeted because of information they willingly provided.

Risk of Intrusion

• Advertisers need to strike the right balance between privacy and personalization if they do not want to run the risk of intrusion. As far as ad personalization is concerned, there is a thin line between delightful and creepy.

•  More than 60% of consumers find the following advertising actions acceptable: product recommendations that were based on their purchase history, birthday emails, and reminders about items left in their online shopping cart.
• In contrast, less than 50% of consumers find the following instances acceptable: receiving an email with a coupon while browsing at a store, and receiving an ad for a recently discussed product.
• Consumers who feel intruded upon can turn off personalized ads or use ad blockers. According to a survey, 34.1% of millennials, 29.2% of Gen Xers, and 22.3% of Boomers have successfully switched off personalized ads. Also, this survey indicates that 64.4% of male consumers and 52.6% use ad blockers.
• It appears that the things that distinguish delightful personalization from creepy personalization are as follows: (a) whether information was obtained within or outside the website where the ad appears, and (b) whether information was willingly provided by the consumer or inferred by the advertiser.

Research Strategy