Study Finds Majority of Consumers Want Biometrics On Credit, Debit Cards

More than half (52 percent) of respondents agreed with the statement that "it will make it much harder for terrorists to operate within the U.S. with the use of biometrics to establish the identity of Americans." Conducted in September 2006, the survey indicates that Americans are willing to forego some personal privacy and anticipate misuse of the information in exchange for security. Fifty-three percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the use of biometrics "will greatly reduce personal privacy because the government will be able to track your movements." Sixty percent of respondents agreed that "there is a high potential for the government to misuse the information."

But Americans also seem unsure as to how effective biometrics are in combating identity theft. More than two-thirds of Americans (68 percent) believe that adding biometric identifiers to ID documents will make it much more difficult for thieves to steal their identities but a nearly identical proportion (67 percent) think that "criminals will find a way around the technology."

Seventy percent of respondents had heard of biometrics, the measurement of unique physical characteristics used to verify personal identity, prior to being surveyed.

"The survey results seem to indicate that in dealing with government use of biometric data, most people will tolerate a decrease in personal privacy to gain increased security in the form of physical safety," said Fran Maier, executive director and president, TRUSTe. "This doesn't seem to translate to the retail sphere where consumers appear to be more cautious about giving away their personally identifiable information. At TRUSTe, we believe the retail sector can build trust in the use of biometrics by promoting privacy through informed choice about the way that consumers' information is going to be used."

The survey revealed that consumers don't trust systems that use biometric identification as a payment method. Less than two percent of respondents have used a fingerprint payment system and 32 percent say that they "do not trust retail stores with this information." Only 23 percent of respondents expressed a desire to use this kind of payment system.

"We wanted to determine how Americans view the use of biometrics for a variety of identification purposes," said David Stark, North America privacy officer, TNS. "The results of our survey suggest that there are still a significant number of people who are apprehensive about the use of biometrics as a form of ID, and that this number is much greater for retail uses than for government identification."

Commissioned by TRUSTe and conducted by market research group TNS, the survey polled 1,025 U.S. consumers between September 25 and September 29, 2006. Email invitations were sent to a nationally representative sample of the U.S. adult online population derived from the TNS NFO Internet Access Panel, which comprises more than one million U.S. households that have agreed to participate in survey research from time to time. In total, 1,025 online interviews were completed and the survey results are considered accurate to within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.