Giving Compass' Take:

· After reviewing recent surveys, Pew Research Center zeroes in on the problem Americans have with understanding privacy policies and laws and how personal data is used by companies in different ways. 

· How can philanthropists advocate for user privacy and data protection? Why is this so important? 

· Check out these 7 virtues of data privacy and protection.

Many Americans have little to no understanding of what companies are doing with the data that is collected about them. At the same time, nearly all Americans encounter companies’ privacy policies at some point. This survey explores whether they fully read them and how much they understand about these policies.

Privacy policies have become a common feature of public life. One-quarter of adults say they are asked to agree to the terms and conditions of a company’s privacy policy on an almost daily basis, while 32% say this happens about once a week; another 24% say they are asked for this roughly once a month. In total, 97% of Americans say they have ever been asked to agree to the terms and conditions of a company’s privacy policy.

While nearly all Americans are asked to agree to terms and conditions of a company’s privacy policy, relatively few report reading these policies on a regular basis.

Just 9% of adults say they always read a company’s privacy policy before agreeing to the terms and conditions, while an additional 13% say they do this often. And additionally, 38% of Americans say they sometimes read these policies. There is also a segment of the population who forgo reading these policies altogether: More than a third of adults (36%) say they never read a privacy policy before agreeing to it.

Read the full article about Americans and privacy laws by Brooke Auxier, Lee Rainie, Monica Anderson, Andrew Perrin, Madhu Kumar, and Erica Turner at Pew Research Center.