According to a recent survey by the University of Southern California's Center for the Digital Future, 61% of adult Americans said they were "very" or "extremely" concerned about the privacy of personal information when buying online, an increase from 47% in 2006. Prior to 2007, that number had been decreasing for the past six years.
So where do we, as consumers, really stand in 2008? The shopping Web sites we frequent know who we say we are, but not who we actually are. Various industry verticals have minimized risk here to a certain extent; however, none of them can provide 100% assurance. Therefore, in the coming year we will see a continued focus by criminals on the theft of identity information. In the consumer market, we need to be continuously cognizant of how, when and where this theft of our personal information can happen.
This leads to the "how do we help ourselves" question. First we need to educate ourselves about the threats currently in play, as well as growing areas of personal security development; secondly, we can collectively take a few common sense steps to make big strides in keeping our data safe.
