Although a whopping 85% of Internet users are concerned about privacy, only 19% consider taxation relevant to how they use the Web, according to a study released yesterday.
A Stamford, CT-based Internet consulting firm, @plan, interviewed 1,000 active adult Internet users who visited a Web site within the previous 30 days. The survey was conducted between February 16 and 19 and has an error margin of 3%.
Three out of five people surveyed said the Internet industry itself was better equipped that the federal government to resolve their privacy concerns as did those who preferred to have the federal government resolve the Internet tax issue. No mention was made in the survey of legislation pending in Congress that would extend the existing moratorium on new Internet taxes or increase personal privacy over the Internet.
Mark Wright, CEO, commenting on the findings said “the issue of Internet privacy has continued to snowball over the last few months and is front and center with online consumers” who are looking to the Internet industry “to devise a solution to these problems quickly and effectively.”
The survey also found:
* 63 % consider safeguarding the safety of children under 18 on the Internet to be extremely important, with 53% preferring to leave that up to the industry itself and only 43% supporting government controls.
* 41% regarded equal access to the Internet for everyone, regardless of their economic status, as extremely important, with 59 % favoring industry action as opposed to 39% who favored action by the federal government.
* 34% viewed high school classroom access to the Internet as extremely important with 53% opting for federal government involvement while 45% preferred to leave that to the Internet industry itself.
* 32% considered the protection of intellectual properties from being distributed without authorization as extremely important, again favoring industry regulation (55%) over government action (43%).
Other results from the study, released last Friday determined that 68% were concerned about the Internet’s vulnerability to hackers; 64% expect Internet disruptions to increase, but 76% felt the federal government was better equipped to deal with those disruptions than the industry itself.
