User Privacy Concerns for E-Commerce

Main Focus Of The Article

Individuals show various levels of privacy concerns when it comes to E-commerce. Ackerman, Cranor, and Reagle (1999) gave participants four scenarios in which they had to indicate whether they were comfortable providing various types of personal information. A majority of users were very comfortable with providing general information (e.g., favorite food) and somewhat comfortable with providing directory-type information (name, address, e-mail), but they were uncomfortable with providing financial and health information (e.g., credit card, health status). For questions relating to the users’ general attitudes regarding providing personal information, Ackerman et al. concluded that users can be classified as

• 1.

  Marginally concerned,

• 2.

  Privacy fundamentalists (users who are very concerned with privacy), or

• 3.

  Pragmatic (users whose concerns vary as a function of the type of transaction being performed).