Divorcees, Southerners Most Concerned About Web Privacy

According to the inaugural Consumer Confidence Edition, a quarterly survey of privacy concerns and sentiments conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of TRUSTe, a whopping 90 percent of adults say they worry about privacy online -- with 46 percent of users indicating they are concerned “sometimes,” 21 percent "frequently" and 23 percent "always."

Beyond that, the study found that 41 percent of online adults don’t trust most businesses with their personal information and 88 percent avoid doing business with companies they don’t trust -- scary numbers for anyone making their living on the Internet. The groups of people most concerned with privacy appear to be Southerners, divorcees and people between the ages of 45 and 54. “Divorcees, I put that in the bucket of you’ve gone through substantive life changes and you’re probably more skeptical and leery and cautious potentially than people who haven’t had that kind of life change,” Chris Babel, CEO of TRUSTe said, speculating on the reasons for their apparent heightened concern. “The age group one and the divorcee one resonated.” But Southerners? Said Babel: “I don’t have a good hypothesis.”