• Read Write Web, Wednesday, July 1, 2009 12:18 PM

A new survey from Webroot, a security solutions firm, shows that 78% of social networking users are concerned about privacy, but most fail to act on it. In fact, the survey says that most users don't even understand how to use the privacy tools already in place on social networks today.

Given the concern about privacy, it's surprising to find that 80% of the users surveyed allow all or part of their profiles to be indexed by public search engines like Google, while 66% of users don't restrict any profile information from being publicly searchable. Perhaps even more astonishing: a whopping 59% of the 1100 surveyed said they weren't sure who could see their profile. Yikes.

Moreover, 32% of users shared at least three pieces of identifiable information on their profile pages, and 28% accepted friend requests from complete strangers. As expected, younger users tended to be more blasé about their privacy settings than older users. "These sorts of behaviors show a distinct lack of understanding about the risks of sharing personal information with those you don't know," says Read Write Web's Sarah Perez. "It also certainly shows that being concerned about privacy hasn't been enough of an incentive for users to take any action to change their behavior."

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