Australians express worry over online privacy

Australians are worried about risks to their privacy and believe online services, including social media, pose the greatest threat, a government survey found. People expect organizations they deal with to take effective steps to safeguard their personal information, a report released Wednesday by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said. Forty-eight percent of Australians in the OAIC 2013 Community Attitudes to Privacy survey said they believe online services such as social networking sites present the greatest privacy risk, with only 9 percent of survey respondents saying they think social media websites take adequate measures to protect users' privacy. "In the last five years we have seen a significant change in how people communicate and interact online," Australian Information Commissioner John McMillan said. "People's attitude to the importance of personal privacy protection is changing at the same time." Asked in the survey to name the industries considered most trustworthy, 90 percent of participants named health service providers. Financial institutions were trusted by 74 percent and government was trusted by 69 percent. The survey interviewed 1,000 Australians from June 13 through July 10, using landlines and mobile numbers. No overall margin of error was reported.