• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 27, 2005

It seems that Web users are going to far greater lengths than anticipated to protect their privacy online. Now, joining the year's barrage of reports stating that users are deleting their cookies--in many cases as frequently as every week--comes a study finding that more than half of Web users don't give out personal data online.

The report, issued this week by Consumer Reports WebWatch, also reveals that one in four Web users avoid online shopping and 30 percent have curtailed their Internet use, due to fears of identity theft.

The WebWatch report in many ways confirms the findings of a similar study issued earlier this year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which concluded that more than 90 percent of Web users had cut back on online activities in hopes of avoiding spyware. Pew found that 81 percent of Web users had stopped opening certain attachments and that 48 percent had stopped visiting some Web sites.

Why are Web users growing more cautious? One reason surely is that many have been burned by spyware or other programs that have surreptitiously installed themselves on users' hard drives and taken over the browser.

Of course, illicitly installing spyware and stealing identities aren't the same, but they do overlap, as certain types of spyware can be used to record keystrokes and obtain access to users' accounts. At the least, both practices inconvenience the victims.

Another explanation for why users are warier is that they lack solid information about marketing practices online. Consider that, though search engines put phrases like "sponsored links" near the paid listings, there's often no explanation for that term on the same page. Perhaps that's why somewhere around half of all Internet users said they hadn't heard about paid search, according to WebWatch.

In the absence of specific facts, users apparently are assuming the worst. If marketers want to reverse that state of affairs, one place to start is with the prominent disclosure of their own business practices.