Reconcile these two stories... A new survey covered in the New York Times shows that Americans are concerned about online privacy:

When asked if they were comfortable with behavioral targeting - when advertisers use a person's browsing history or search history to decide which ad to show them - only 28 percent said they were. More than half said they were not. And more than 75 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, "The Internet is not well regulated, and na??ve users can easily be taken advantage of."

Yet, Google continues to roll out new targeted ads, few people bother to read privacy statements, and only a fraction of people use their web browsers privacy options to control things like cookies and scripts. Last summer, L. Gordon Crovitz summed it up in the Wall Street Journal: "Privacy? We Got Over It."

We now seem happy to trust companies with our information for benefits such as one-click buying and online searches for personally relevant results. In a digital world where it is possible to know more than ever about everything, including one another, the new vice may be the flip side of privacy — concealing information about ourselves of legitimate value to others.
In the physical world, surveillance cameras, satellites and bio-recognition systems have redefined privacy expectations. We have learned that "privacy can be very dangerous," as federal appeals judge Richard Posner has observed. "Obviously if you're a terrorist, privacy is enormously important. So the more we think of privacy as endangering us, that will reinforce these commercial incentives to surrender privacy."

In the battle between convenience and privacy, I'll bet on convenience.