Study: Consumers would trade some privacy for convenience

Computerworld - While privacy remains a major concern for people around the world, a majority of consumers would share personal data if they knew the information was securely protected and if sharing it would make their lives easier, according to Unisys Corp.’s Global Study on the Public’s Perceptions about Identity Management (download PDF).

The study, released this week, was independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute to capture the perceptions of individuals in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America on methods and technologies for managing identity within business and government organizations, Unisys said. In addition, the study looked at how individuals’ sense of privacy affects their views on new ID management technologies such as biometrics.

“The No. 1 issue we were interested in exploring and we were interested to learn about was attitudes in different regions of the world regarding authentication technology use and acceptability,” said Mark Cohn, vice president for homeland security solutions at Unisys.

“There have been a lot of concerns about privacy and a lot of issues where businesses and government have been trying to deal with authentication problems but in sort of an isolated way," he said. What Unisys wanted to know was if there were "some kind of convergence and interoperability standards, would people be comfortable or uncomfortable with that.”

Cohn said Unisys’ thesis was that a single, general strategy for ID authentication that could be adopted by businesses and governments -- and was interoperable worldwide -- would be more efficient than the varying systems now in place.

“There’s an opportunity to save money, do a better job with security and be more convenient for consumers if people are comfortable with a convergence study,” he said.

What the study found was that in every region of the world, people would accept an identification strategy such as the use of a multipurpose ID or smart card that could serve as a driver’s license and an ATM card and could be used to pay tolls or for border crossings, Cohn said. A person’s health records could also be put on it, he said.

“So it’s a secure ID that can store multiapplication data for multiple purposes,” Cohn said. “And they put right on there digital certificates -- PKI certificates -- for encryption and authentications. So now that same card can be used for Internet commerce to prove you are who you claim to be. This card could be used for 14 different purposes. We’ve issued about 17 million to people in Malaysia who voluntarily choose what they want their card to be used for. Other countries are doing it as well, but these systems are not interoperable.”