50% of consumers fear to shop online because of spam

Beyond identity theft and card theft, highlighted in a number of current advertising campaigns by card issuers, more than 50% of consumers recently surveyed by Jupiter fear the personal information supplied in an online transaction will be sold to a retailer's marketing partners and generate unwanted marketing messages. More than a third of those surveyed also expressed concerns that unauthorized recurring transactions, such as subscription renewals, could result from supplying credit card information online. In the survey, 30% of consumers worried about merchants not shipping products for which their credit card had been charged online, while 20% worried that a merchant could debit a card number supplied online for a higher price than the advertised price.

Older consumers were more concerned with identity theft - 63% of those over age 55 surveyed saw it as a threat, versus 56% of those aged 18 to 14. Identity theft concerns lessened as consumers' online tenure increased. Among young and less-tenured consumers, the greatest concern was merchant duplicity. For example, 32% of those surveyed aged 18 to 24 expressed concern about being charged more than they agreed to pay at checkout, versus 20% of survey respondents overall.