世論 What Japan Thinks

This short but rather sweet survey from blogch and iShare into ranking of what is considered personal information made me think, and I hope it does the same for you.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 14th of May 2008 636 members of blogch completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample was male, 14.5% in their twenties, 46.7% in their thirties, 27.4% in their forties, and 11.5% in their teens or over fifty.

I don’t know why home email address was not included in the survey, nor why people help their age more private than their date of birth!

For me, there is no way I would part with my cell phone number and email address, and for passport number, I’d query the need for people to ask for it rather than be concerned about the privacy issue.

All junk mail, as well as all other envelopes with addresses on them, go through the shredder before disposal, although I always suspect that the reason is more to stop the rubbish police tracking us down for chucking stuff out on the wrong day!

Research results

Q1: From the list below, select which you think are personal information. (Sample size=636, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Cell phone number	594	93.4%
Home telephone number	592	93.1%
Passport number	591	92.9%
Face photo	567	89.2%
Address	566	89.0%
Cell phone email address	549	86.3%
Full name	533	83.8%
Age	505	79.4%
Family situation	492	77.4%
Place of work	486	76.4%
Date of birth	485	76.3%
Work, school email address	423	66.5%
Occupation	367	57.7%
First name	300	47.2%
Last name	292	45.9%
Free email address	284	44.7%
Mixi, other SNS ID, URL	278	43.7%
Skype, MSN, other messenger ID	275	43.2%
Sex	224	354.2%
Handle, nickname, etc	121	19.0%
Other	15	2.4%

Q1A: From the list below, select which you think are personal information. (Sample size=636, by sex, multiple answer)

	Male N=349	Percentage	Female N=287	Percentage
Cell phone number	322	92.3%	272	94.8%
Home telephone number	323	92.6%	269	93.7%
Passport number	321	92.0%	270	94.1%
Face photo	304	87.1%	263	91.6%
Address	307	88.0%	259	90.2%
Cell phone email address	294	84.2%	255	88.9%
Full name	283	81.1%	250	87.1%
Age	275	78.8%	230	80.1%
Family situation	271	77.7%	221	77.0%
Place of work	266	76.2%	220	76.7%
Date of birth	257	73.6%	228	79.4%
Work, school email address	225	64.5%	198	69.0%
Occupation	201	57.6%	166	57.8%
First name	162	46.4%	138	48.1%
Last name	155	44.4%	137	47.7%
Free email address	152	43.6%	132	46.0%
Mixi, other SNS ID, URL	136	39.0%	142	49.5%
Skype, MSN, other messenger ID	144	41.3%	131	45.6%
Sex	123	35.2%	101	35.2%
Handle, nickname, etc	69	19.8%	52	18.1%
Other	7	2.0%	8	2.8%

Q2: What do you most often do when you throw away junk mail? (Sample size=636)

	All	Male N=349	Female N=287
Shred them	36.3%	34.4%	38.7%
Rip them up	28.0%	27.5%	28.6%
Just throw them out	16.2%	19.8%	11.8%
Cut out the name and address	8.5%	8.0%	9.1%
Cut them up with scissors	6.8%	6.6%	7.0%
Obscure the name and address	1.4%	1.1%	1.7%
Punch holes through the name and address	0.6%	0.6%	0.7%
Other	2.2%	2.0%	2.4%

Oh, and the source article requested that I include the following:

意識調査：メールアドレスは個人情報？個人情報だと思うランキング
＜意識調査＞個人情報に関する意識調査 ブロガー向け情報サイト「ブロッチ」などネットマーケティングを展開する株式会社アイシェアは同社が提供するサービス会員をパネラ・・・≫続き

[ブロッチ.jp]