The authors cited three findings from the data: “First, the effect small incentives have on disclosure may explain the privacy paradox: whereas people say they care about privacy, they are willing to relinquish private data quite easily when incentivized to do so.

“Second, small navigation costs have a tangible effect on how privacy-protective consumers’ choices are, often in sharp contrast with individual stated preferences about privacy.

“Third, the introduction of irrelevant, but reassuring information about privacy protection makes consumers less likely to avoid surveillance, regardless of their stated preferences towards privacy.”

All of which means we say we’re bothered about staying secure online, but if it promises freebies, takes too long or looks kind of like it’s probably maybe OK, we’ll throw caution to the wind.

While loads of us are still using easily hackable passwords such as ‘123456’, ‘qwerty’ and, yes, ‘password’, what did we expect? Time to up our game…

Image: iStock / Rex Features

We would screw over our friends for a free slice of pizza, study says