Privacy Issues in Public Web Sites

The advent of the Internet has altered the way that individuals find information and has changed how they engage with many organizations, like government, health care, and commercial enterprises. The emergence of the World Wide Web has also resulted in a significant increase in the collection and process of individuals’ information electronically, which has lead to consumers concerns about privacy issues. Many researches have reported the customers’ worries for the possible misuse of their personal data during their transactions on the Internet (Earp & Baumer, 2003; Furnell & Karweni, 1999), while investigation has been made in measuring individuals’ concerns about organizational information privacy practices (Smith, Milberg & Burke, 1996). Information privacy, which “concerns an individual’s control over the processing, that is the acquisition, disclosure, and use, of personal information” (Kang, 1998) has been reported as one of the most important “ethical issues of the information age” (Mason, 1986). background