Online Shoppers are Willing to Pay More for Privacy

Caroline Matische writes "People are willing to pay more to buy items from online retailers who make their privacy policies clear, a new Carnegie Mellon University study showed. People were more likely to buy from online merchants with good privacy policies and were also willing to pay about 60 cents extra on a $15 purchase when buying from a site with a privacy policy they liked."

Comments

Oh, please

[Anonymous Coward]

This study is BS. Purchase a sex toy? How can this study even be valid. How about trying books or something like that?

Credit Card

[Philotic]

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band- The Beatles [1] - 10.99
Logitech 2-Button Mouse [1] - 15.99
Secure Purchasing w/ Advanced Privacy Protection - 4.99

Sub Total - 31.97

Please enter your credit card information, date of birth, and social security number to proceed to checkout.

Paying more is not always helpful

[twitter]

Users should expect, no, demand privacy, not have to pay for it. Privacy should already be there, because the user has to trust the company to handle their data correctly.

You are obviously unaware of a product called Microsoft Windows (TM), which comes with a privacy invading EULA. They promise to abuse you, yet you pay more than you would for a free alternative. Well, you don't really pay more - Microsoft's coercive monopoly makes using free software expensive in several ways:

• hardware pot luck - hardware vendors who play well with free software are punished. The user must be careful in their purchases. Accelerated video is a particularly sore spot.
• unhelpful ISPs - while the usual "help" is not much, a WinDOS specific script read is never useful to a free software user.
• culture lockout - users of entertainment sites often must chose between their software freedom and participation in their culture. I've never seen a US TV broadcaster video that worked with free software. Even youtube requires Flash and offers no alternatives for watching, to their credit they will take free formats to share with your non free friends. Wikipedia, archive.org and a few other places have embraced truly free culture. Non free users have as much and more problems sharing their creations, so that side of the equation is neutral.
• work lockout - every few years M$ puts out another stupid format that no one but M$ can use. This is also a neutral issue, as non free users also pay the price but they have already paid half of it.

Yet for all of these created problems, people use and love free software. There are reasons beyond privacy, such as features, quality and stability, but privacy is a big one.

Privacy is just another part of good service. Another way to look at it is that people are not willing to pay as much for poor service. Once upon a time the grocer who talked to other people about what you bought was called a gossip and avoided.

While poor service might not pay well, privacy can be violated without the user knowing. Service may be expensive and appear good, but you were sold to pay for it. People still don't know about ChoicePoint. Sometimes you don't have or know of a choice in the service. A free market can fix some of these problems but it can't work where people just don't know.

The only way to insure good privacy is to pass laws that take the money out of inappropriate data sharing. Now that most of us buy groceries from big chains, automated gossip should be outlawed because it can not be avoided otherwise. How much birth control and alcohol you purchase may be of interest to your insurance company, but it's really none of their business. What books you purchase and read are no one's business. Places like ChoicePoint are an abomination that can be missused in all sorts of ways. That you paid more for an item does not mean the store won't put your information into ChoicePoint. Most of the data in ChoicePoint should not exist.