User's perspectives on privacy in web-based applications

Privacy is a major concern in web-based applications. While privacy was a sensitive issue long before the advent of computers, the phenomenal growth in Internet commerce in recent years has brought privacy concerns to the fore. The problem of privacy has been further exacerbated by the fact that the Web makes it easy for new data to be automatically collected and analyzed by sophisticated data mining tools and personalized marketing services. This study explores the nature of the privacy concern in detail, especially for the online environment. The objective of this study is to get a better understanding of the factors that can affect online privacy concerns and how these concerns could affect the users' behavior and the future of the Internet and electronic commerce.