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Based on the last poll about web mining and privacy www.kdnuggets.com/polls/2001/privacy.htm, in particular the low participation -- only 113, compared to 300-400 in previous polls, I made the inference that

"KDnuggets readers are concerned about privacy, but don't act on their concerns".

Tom Dietterich (Oregon State University) writes

"I disagree with your interpretation. I suspect that what this shows that people do not have good tools for controlling cookies. The controls built in to Netscape and IE appear to have been designed specifically to be useless, which is no surprise, since these companies have a financial interest in the cookie industry. But if you buy a wonderful product like Norton Internet Security, you get very fine-grained cookie control and a pretty good interface. Now I reveal my cookies only when it is in my interest to do so! "

based on the fact that 84 percent of Internet users in the US are concerned about businesses and strangers getting their personal data online, but 56 percent did not know about cookies.

Your conclusion doesn't follow at all. Clearly people are concerned about their privacy, but since 56% don't even know about cookies its hardly possible for them to "act on their concerns." They simply wouldn't be aware that cookies are an entry-point for privacy invasion. And how many of the people who do know about cookies are fully aware of the uses to which they can be put? Probably fewer than 20%, based on an informal poll of the people I've worked with. Thus its completely possible that 84% of web users would reject cookies if they were (a) aware of them, (b) aware of their use, and (c) unwilling to trade some privacy for convenience.