Online Privacy and Safety

The public's muted response on possible government monitoring of their online behavior differs from that of investigative journalists, whose work makes them potential targets for monitoring.

Lee Rainie details the social and business implications of a reshaped privacy landscape

Nearly two years after Snowden's revelations, 87% of Americans say they have heard about U.S. surveillance programs. Among them, 25% say they have changed their own technological behaviors in some way.

As journalism becomes an increasingly digital practice, the data and communications of investigative journalists have become vulnerable to hackers, government surveillance and legal threats. But what are these vulnerabilities – and what steps have investigative journalists taken to protect themselves?

Lee Rainie presents survey findings about how people navigate privacy in a networked world in their relationship with government, commercial enterprises and each other.

Pew Research Center has been studying Americans’ attitudes about their own personal information security and that of their families for years. Here are a few highlights.

Will governments and corporations expand current tracking policies? Or will innovators create new ways for individuals to control personal information? Experts are divided on whether a secure and balanced privacy-rights infrastructure will be in place by 2025.

We canvassed thousands of experts to ask them to predict the future of privacy in America and found they were divided on whether or not a secure, trusted privacy-rights infrastructure would be in place by 2025.

Our true/false statement question asked, “When a company posts a privacy policy, it ensures that the company keeps confidential all the information it collects on users.” Half of online Americans answered incorrectly.

The majority of Americans feel their privacy is being challenged in some fundamental ways, our new report finds. See the variety of perspectives our focus group respondents shared about privacy. Their answers are real, but they have been assigned a pseudonym.