Study: Two-thirds of Americans oppose online tracking

Posted by Erina Lin on September 30, 2009 at 12:46 PM

About two out of three Americans object to advertisers' tracking their behaviours online, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley. The number is even higher when they learn the different ways marketers use to follow their online movements, The New York Times reported.

The privacy topic has become a hot issue. Advocates claim that online usage tracking by Web sites and advertisers has gone too far, while marketers are arguing that advertising supports free online content. In July, major advertising trade groups proposed some measures they hoped would fend off regulation, such as a clear notice to Web users stating they were being tracked.

The survey conduct interviews with 1,000 adult online users. Sixty-six percent said they are averse to tailored ads. When informed that they were tracked on the site, another 7 percent said it was "not OK." An additional 18 percent of the original 66 percent said so when they were tracked via other Web sites, and an additional 20 percent said so when they were tracked offline, according to The New York Times article.

In terms of the customised discounts and customised news, 51 percent of respondents said that tailored discounts were OK, versus 58 percent to customized news.

Advertisers often use teenagers' behaviour on social sites such as Facebook as evidence that they do not mind sharing information to marketers. However, 55 percent of those between ages 18 and 24 objected to tailored advertising.

In addition, the survey asked opinions on laws regarding tracking, such as if there should be a law providing people with the right to know what a Web site knew about them. 69 percent said yes. Most respondents (92 percent) also favoured a hypothetical law which required Web sites and advertisers to delete information about an individual upon request.

"I don't think that behavioral targeting is something that we should eliminate, but I do think that we're at a cusp of a new era, and the kinds of information that companies share and have today is nothing like we'll see 10 years from now," said Joseph Turow, lead author of the study. He would love to see "a regime in which people feel they have control over the data that marketers collect about them. The most important thing is to bring the public into the picture, which is not going on right now," according to the study.