The survey, conducted by the Information Security Group – one of the largest academic security groups in the world and based at Royal Holloway, the University of London – revealed that twice as many people (51.3%) said that they do not believe that privacy policies are observed.

"The survey results are a useful stepping stone to helping us understand the bigger picture when it comes to on-line privacy practices and behaviours", said project manager Lizzie Coles-Kemp.

The survey, which took in responses of more than 1000 internet users between the ages of 18 and 82, also found that 86% of respondents feel they have been a victim of privacy invasion over the internet and that just 2.4% are "not concerned at all about internet privacy".

Drilling down into the report reveals that the tracking of web pages visited by an individual is predominantly regarded as either harmful (43.1%) or both helpful and harmful (39.7%).

Against this backdrop, the report notes that very few regard it as purely beneficial.

According to the ISG, the survey was developed by researchers from existing privacy scales that have been previously used to measure privacy attitudes and behaviours.

The group says that the use of existing scales enables researchers to compare their results with previous surveys of this nature.

The total number of valid responses for the survey was 1048. Of the 1048 respondents, 49.8% (523) were male and 50.2% (525) were female, with a mean age of 41.0 years.