OPA Top 100 Study
Summary of Results

  • The OPA study is based on a census of the Top 100 ".com" Web sites visited by consumers at home drawn from a sampling frame of the top 7500 URL's based on unduplicated visits during January 1999. The unduplicated reach of the Top 100 sites is 94.4%.

  • What personal information do Web sites-collect from consumers? 99% of the Top 100 collected at least one type of personal identifying information (e.g. name, email address, postal address). 75% collected at least one type of demographic information (e.g. gender, preferences, Zip code). 74% of the sites collected both personal identifying and demographic information. All 100 Web sites collected at least one type of personal information.

  • How many Web sites posted privacy disclosures? 94% (94 sites) of the Top 100 Web sites have posted at least one type of privacy disclosure (a privacy policy notice or an information practice statement). 60% of the Web sites posted both types of disclosures. 6% (6 sites) did not post either type of privacy disclosure.

  • Do these disclosures reflect fair information practices? The content of all privacy disclosures were analyzed for four elements of fair information (notice, choice, access and security) and whether or not they posted contact information to ask questions or to complain about privacy. Of the 94 Web sites that collected personal information and posted a privacy disclosure, 92.6% included at least one survey element for notice, 74.5% contained at least one survey element for choice, 50% contained at least one survey element for access, 51.1% contained at least one survey element for security, and 58.5% contained at least one survey element for contact information . 19.18% (n=18) of the same 94 Web sites (or 18% of the entire Top 100) contained at least one survey element for notice, choice, access, security and contact information

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