Consumers Dislike Data-Mining but Feel Helpless to Stop It, Report Finds

Should consumers be able to control how companies collect and use their personal data? At a dinner honoring privacy advocates this week in Washington, Timothy Cook, the chief executive of Apple, gave a speech in which he endorsed this simple idea. “You might like these so-called free services,” Mr. Cook said. “But we don’t think they’re worth having your e-mail or your search history or now even your family photos data-mined and sold off for God knows what advertising purpose.” Now a study from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania has come to a similar conclusion: Many Americans do not think the trade-off of their data for personalized services, giveaways or discounts is a fair deal either.

The findings are likely to fuel the debate among tech executives and federal regulators over whether companies should give consumers control over the information collected about them. In the survey, which is scheduled to be made public on June 5, 55 percent of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that “it’s O.K. if a store where I shop uses information it has about me to create a picture of me that improves the services they provide for me.” About seven in 10 people also disagreed that it was fair for a store to monitor their online activities in exchange for free Wi-Fi while at the store. And 91 percent of respondents disagreed that it was fair for companies to collect information about them without their knowledge in exchange for a discount.