Study: more Americans fear spying from corporations than the government (also, clowns)

Both tech companies and the U.S. government have raised the ire of privacy hawks. This may explain why even though Congress hasn’t done a thing to stop the National Security Agency from collecting data, corporate threats to privacy seem to inspire the lion’s share of angry headlines. Just this week, Apple had to calm fears that a new search feature (in Spotlight) was not tracking users, even though Apple used location data to improve search results on Bing.

Indeed, a new study finds that more Americans fear spying from corporations than the government (but only slightly). In total, 82 percent of Americans fear corporations, while 74 percent fear the government.

The data comes from a new Chapman University survey of everything that freaks Americans out. In addition to Internet fears, around 65 percent of Americans also fear public speaking — meaning that more Americans are concerned about Internet privacy than speaking in public.

Interesting, but unrelated: 20 percent of Americans are at least somewhat afraid of clowns.

Readers can see the full survey from Chapman University here.