Americans don’t understand what companies can do with their personal data—and that’s a problem – Tech Xplore

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Nevertheless, the survey provided many insights into Americans’ digital knowledge:

  • Only around 1 in 3 Americans knows it is legal for an online store to charge people different prices depending on where they are located.
  • More than 8 in 10 Americans believe, incorrectly, that the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) stops apps from selling data collected about app users’ health to marketers.
  • Fewer than 1 in 3 Americans knows that price-comparison travel sites such as Expedia or Orbitz are not obligated to display the lowest airline prices.
  • Fewer than half of Americans know that Facebook’s user privacy settings allow users to limit some of the information about them shared with advertisers.

Reissman, H. (2023, February 7). Americans don’t understand what companies can do with their personal data—and that’s a problem. Tech Xplore. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-02-americans-dont-companies-personal-dataand.html

 

Report: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/2023-02/Americans_Can%27t_Consent.pdf

Journal article: Joseph Turow et al, The Tradeoff Fallacy: How Marketers are Misrepresenting American Consumers and Opening Them Up to Exploitation, SSRN Electronic Journal (2016). DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2820060

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