Online Privacy & Security

This report is intended to give a general overview of how the federal health privacy regulation ("HIPAA") may or may not apply to health Web sites.

At the most fundamental level, Americans would like the presumption of privacy when they are online, and they would like to be in control of when pieces of their identity are given out.

Americans are deeply worried about criminal activity online, and these concerns may be a factor in the public's support of the right of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to intercept criminal suspects' email.

This report looks at how new Internet users behave online at two points along the Internet’s diffusion curve, one in November 1998 and the other in March 2000.

Online Americans have great concerns about breaches of privacy. At the same time, they do a striking number of intimate and trusting things on the Internet, and the overwhelming majority has never had a seriously harmful thing happen to them online.

The "Love Bug" virus, which interrupted online life in many places around the world in the first week of May 2000, afflicted a surprisingly small number of American Internet users.