Carnegie Mellon University researchers have recently done a study to help answer the question, "Does the design and look of a website correspond with the willingness of people to give information to the website?" The researchers were able to study and find the the actual appearance of a website has a lot to do with the amount of personal information a person is willing to give. The personal information includes anything from email address to relationship information all the way to private personal questions being answered. They say that just by giving up your email address, a person who collects the email addresses will be able to trace it back to the actual owners name of each email address. Through the study the researchers were also able to test the question, and by doing so they set up three different websites. The websites were all designed in different ways, from very formal with business type fonts to the more laid back casual webpage, down to a webpage with a devil cartoon and vibrant colors with different font. After posting very similar questions on all three sites, and having a panel visit the sites the researchers found that people were way more likely to give up more personal information on the last webpage. Whether many people know or not, these many different webpages are all collecting this data to help inform marketers or collect statistics of how people are interacting. To give up this personal information is a big problem for many people, but more or less a gold mine for the people capable of collecting the information. By collecting the information they are able to either sell it or continue to gain market information for free. I see how this can be a problem, but when it comes down to it, it is the persons own responsibility to make the correct decision on whether the questions asked are worth answering and the information asked for is worth giving.
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/26184/?a=f
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