Three quarters of Europeans worried about data

POLSTERS for the EU claim that three out of four Europeans are concerned about putting their personal data online.

According to the European Union's Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini, many Europeans are worried about the security of their personal data and have not got a clue how to protect it.

Frattini spilled the beans on EU research is looking at how member states deal with data and this includes analysing how Internet search engines comply with EU privacy law.

Although punters do have worries about handing over their data, more than half said they trusted medical services, financial institutions, employers, police, social security, tax authorities and local government to handle their data. Given these bodies records at keeping this information safe, one has to wonder if this trust is somewhat misplaced.

The other half confessed to being daft enouogh to trust market and opinion research companies, nonprofit organisations, mail order companies, credit reference agencies, credit card agencies and travel businesses.

The survey showed that more than 75 per cent were happy to have their phones tapped in certain circumstances or their credit card use monitored if it would save them from terrorists.

Only 15 per cent gave a toss about the monitoring of air traveller data in all cases.

At the same time punters were worried that EU governments were pursuing "big brother" policies. So in other words EU citizens do not mind being monitored so long as they know about it. Sheesh.

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