42% of the respondents had become more concerned about the use of their ID card number while 58% thought that organizations were more careful in handling ID card numbers than 12 months previously (Figure 1).
The order of the ratings for privacy invasive activities was roughly the same for the three surveys conducted in 1997, 1997 and 1999. The increases in the invasiveness ratings were significant between 1997 and 1998 but not between 1998 and 1999. The 1999 respondents regarded "a newspaper publishing a photo of you taken in a public place without your permission" as the most invasive and "direct marketing mail from your bank" as the least invasive. In general, they would regard telephone calls as more invasive than direct mail. Direct mail from companies with which the individual has a prior relationship would be more acceptable than that from companies without such a relationship (Figure 2).