That's why the average U.S. household, according to Forrester Research Inc., gets 150 catalogs and more than 50 telemarketing calls every year. Individuals are not completely helpless. The real problem is that the burden remains on individuals to take action if they're worried about how information about them might be used. I'm not saying people should become privacy survivalists. But we believe there should be a legal right of privacy because we don't believe a self-regulatory approach is going to work.
Studies conducted by marketers and independent parties bear that out.
The Georgia Tech study found 69 percent of respondents were reluctant to share information online. Because more than 62 percent said they don't trust the collecting sites to use the data responsibly. But 45 percent said they would give more sensitive personal information if a site assured them it would not share that data. By 2000, tools like filters, agents, profilers and anonymizers will be used by only 7 million privacy protectors - a mere 10 percent of Internet users. The masses will suffer repeated invasions of privacy until an acute event triggers an explosion.