2 December, 2005 - 3:52pm

A new survey by TRUSTe, a nonprofit privacy organization, found that over two-third of US Internet shoppers plan to limit their online holiday spending this year due to concerns over misuse of personal information. The top issues cited were: identity theft (49%), spam resulting from online purchases (39%), credit card theft (39%), and spyware (38%). The survey also found that privacy concerns would deter more than 40% of the respondents from buying from smaller online retailers.

In response to the study, Gartner analyst John Pescatore noted that there's definitely a reason for both consumers and merchants to feel more concerned about data security and privacy issues compared with previous years. For consumers, he believes the biggest risks come from the increasing use of keystroke logging and password acquisition tools by hackers.