WORDS THAT STILL HAUNT THE NET: PRIVACY AND SECURITY

Can Americans find privacy online? Not yet. According to a new Business Week/Harris Poll, people consider the Internet less secure and less private than other forms of communication. Their fear of loss of security or invasion of privacy appears to be a key barrier to using the Internet more or at all, and to making online purchases. Another critical finding: People don't trust companies to address these problems effectively.

Only a quarter of the 999 adults surveyed between Feb. 16 and Feb. 23 said they had personally been a victim of some kind of invasion of privacy--not just online. Yet many more fear such invasion, in many forms. Nearly half of respondents who go online, ostensibly a communications-savvy group, said they were at least somewhat concerned that their telephone conversations would be overheard by some other person or organization, while 30% had similar fears about letters sent through the U.S. mail.

But people are far more nervous about online communications and transactions. Fully 58% of online users said they were concerned that an E-mail sent via the Internet could be read by someone else without their consent. Among computer users who don't go online, the number was much higher--89%.

Similarly, among all respondents, 80% said they would be concerned about the security of their personal financial information if they used their credit card to buy something online. That's actually the same number who said they were concerned about giving their credit-card number to a catalog service rep by phone. But the number who said they were "very concerned" about online transactions was significantly higher. By contrast, 53% were concerned about paying a restaurant bill by credit card.

Among people who have made purchases online, 81% are concerned that the company they bought from or one of its employees could use their credit-card information to make purchases improperly. Among people who haven't bought anything on the net, the number is 92%. Even more thought their credit-card data might be made available, in the course of the transaction, to others who might use it without the cardholder's consent.

All this fear appears to dampen the broad use of the Net both as a means of communications and as an avenue of commerce. Some 61% of non-Internet users say they would be more likely to use the Net if they could be assured that their personal information would be kept private; 78% of existing Net users said that such assurance would cause them to use the Net more.

Similarly, 87% of online users said they didn't like sharing personal or financial information so that online ads could be targeted to their tastes and interests. 64% said they were "not willing at all" to give such information--a key, arguably, to the success of online commerce. And 59% said they never registered at companies' Web sites that requested personal information.

Posting a privacy policy on a Web site doesn't appear to assuage people's fears. Among online users, 15% said a posted privacy policy would encourage them "a lot" to purchase products and services; 42% said it would encourage them "a little." Yet respondents were wary of such policies: Only 9% said they completely trusted companies to follow their posted privacy policies; 33% said they didn't trust companies at all.

More striking, a majority of respondents don't agree that private groups should be left alone to develop their own privacy standards. Rather, 53% say the government should pass laws now regarding the collection and use of personal information online. Support for such a solution was almost as high among computer users (50%), though their support has declined somewhat from a year ago.

By Keith Hammonds in New York