Abstract: . . .  promise of confidentiality when in fact they may disclaim it. One respondent described privacy policies this way: They are to protect any information you give to that particular site. You are protected from them giving out your personal information. This suggests that users may often be jumping to inappropriate conclusions when they see that a site has a privacy policy. 40% of respondents agreed that privacy policies help protect information after it has been collected, while 33% disagree. It is unclear how many of the respondents who . . .
. . .  analyses in the domain of Web site privacy policies [3], but focused primarily on a piece of software that is not included with any browser by default and which is not widely deployed. Recently, using a survey similar to the one described here, Garfinkel et al. [10] explored the perceptions and opinions of online merchants regarding digitally signed e-mail. Although some of their general findings are relevant in this context, their focus was on a distinctly different piece of end-user security technology; the need, therefore, remains to explore browser . . .
. . .  acceptable. A further 6% would stop using some sites if the sites did not have privacy policies at all. 34% of our respondents reported that their decision to trust a site never depends on a stated privacy policy. Another 29% feel more comfortable with some sites because of the privacy policies they present, but would probably continue to use the site even if a written policy was not available. 5.2.4. Trust marks We introduced trust marks in this way: Many Web pages display a trust mark . For example, you may have seen some of the trust marks . . .
. . .  Netscape and Mozilla, we were not surprised to find that a majority of our respondents were unfamiliar with them. Reliance on tools. 25% of our respondents reported that they would stop using some sites if the sites did not have privacy policies that were both understandable and acceptable. A further 6% would stop using some sites if the sites did not have privacy policies at all. 34% of our respondents reported that their decision to trust a site never depends on a stated privacy policy. Another 29% feel more comfortable with some sites because . . .
. . .  understanding of the technology, these proportions would tend to suggest that the distinction is not widely recognized. Other observations. Several respondents noted that a possible concern with cookies is that they can be stolen by other sites (presumably through browser security flaws or packet interception). One respondent described cookies this way: Contains information that will allow the website to "recognize" you as a returned user. No personal information is stored on the website server. There is too little context to be certain, . . .
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