The term pay phone has a new meaning today.
For consumers who
wish to ditch their wallets, paying through a mobile phone can be
awfully convenient. Those same consumers can also, often unwittingly,
give up valuable information about themselves to merchants that want to
sell them things.
A new survey by law professors
at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that most Americans
are uneasy with the idea that their phones could divulge behavioral and
personal information, like phone numbers and in-store browsing habits.
The
survey was created by Chris Hoofnagle and Jennifer Urban, who study
digital privacy issues, and financed by Nokia, which makes cellphones.
The survey posed a variety of questions by phone to 1,200 people
nationwide. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage
points.
It found that four out of five of those surveyed “objected
to the transfer of their phone number to a store where they purchase
goods,” while 15 percent said they would “probably allow” transmission
of that information and only 3 percent said they would “definitely allow
it.”
It also found that consumers were less worried about giving
up their e-mail addresses. Although half of the respondents said they
would not want to share their e-mail addresses with the merchant,
one-third said they would be “willing” or “probably willing” to do so.
The
most visceral reaction was elicited by a question that asked whether
consumers would be willing to share “information about you with the
stores that you visit, when you are just browsing.” An overwhelming 96
percent said they would “definitely not allow” or “probably not allow”
it.
Mobile payment is common in many parts of the world, and
slowly gaining acceptance in the United States, particularly with young
consumers. A Federal Reserve survey found those in the age bracket of 18
to 44 represented more than two-thirds of mobile payment users.
It
is not always clear to users of mobile payment services exactly what
kinds of information is recorded and retained by the company that owns
the mobile platform – say Apple, in the case of purchases made on
iTunes, or eBay in the case of mobile payments using PayPal – or how
that is used for marketing purposes.
The researchers wrote that
the new wave of mobile payment services could profoundly alter the
relationship between customers and those service providers.
“Further,”
they concluded, “there is no guarantee that this shift would be
apparent to consumers using mobile payments systems to complete sales
transactions.”
Facebook allows its users to buy virtual goods with
a currency that it calls Facebook Credits. The Berkeley professors
warned of the prospect that “social network services with payment
systems could add transaction histories to their already rich databases
of behavioral information.”