With one in six Americans buying privacy protection products, the market for such tools is valued at $2.5 billion, according to a survey commissioned by Privacy & American Business.
Harris Interactive conducted the survey online May 19-27. There were 3,462 U.S. adult respondents interviewed.
Of the participants, 16 percent said they had bought a privacy product to avoid identity theft, check their credit report or surf or shop online anonymously.
Credit check and identity theft protection products range from $69.99 to $119.99 annually and products that make people anonymous to marketers range from $50 to $100 annually, for an average privacy product price of $75, according to P&AB, bringing the value of the privacy product market to about $2.5 billion.
Among consumers who said they had bought privacy products, most were men ages 35-64 with income exceeding $35,000.
While 16 percent of general consumers claimed to have bought privacy products, 36 percent of American Civil Liberties Union members who participated and 24 percent of Consumer Reports subscribers who responded said they had done so.
Other results included that 32 percent of IBM customers have bought privacy products. Other business customers who said they bought privacy products included 27 percent of Chase/J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch customers, 23 percent of American Express cardholders, 26 percent of Intuit product buyers, 26 percent of Fidelity customers and 24 percent of Earthlink Internet subscribers.
The full survey report, and a P&AB Electronic Newsletter special issue on ID theft, will be released in late July. Contact Irene Oujo at [email protected] with any questions.
Newsletter publisher Privacy & American Business is a creation of the Center for Social and Legal Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy privacy and data protection think tank in Hackensack, NJ.
