Your privacy is impinged offline every day. Stores collect data on your every purchase. Magazines pass on your name, your address and other details to other companies targeting similar demographics. Your financial profile is almost a matter of public record for credit card and mortgage companies. Countless more B2B transactions and information-sharing don't happen because partners don't quite trust the Internet.
Perception is reality.
Industry shouldn't be chiding individuals to get over their privacy concerns. It should be exhorting e-businesses to make their customers and partners feel more at ease on the Web. Well, if billions of dollars in missed business aren't incentive to pay more attention to privacy concerns, looming government intervention should be. Three separate online privacy bills are lurking in the U.S. Senate while hundreds of pieces of legislation are on state agendas. Taxation wasn't a politically tenable way to get in.