Information Protection Article o' the Week - Microsoft Study Finds Consumers Want Control Over Data

I ran across this article on the InformationWeek website. Microsoft did a survey to see how people feel about privacy on the Web. Of course they found that most people have an uneasy feeling about sharing information on the Internet.

The top areas of concern for consumers in the Microsoft focus groups were identity theft (for all segments), child protection (for parents), and the sharing or selling of personal information without consent (for all segments)....

"Even data that other may not think is personally identifying, we think consumers should have some control over that," he said. "For example, when we build our ad system, even through it's designed not to use any personally identifying information, we still give all consumers the ability to say, 'Hey, I don't want to receive targeted ads ... please don't use even behavioral data to deliver targeted ads to me.' So that's a level of control we think is appropriate and very consistent with what consumers are saying, because they do want this level of control."