There’s a lot of talk about privacy in the security world, and we all tend to think we know what we mean by it.

But a new study [ http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_359_en.pdf ]  carried out by the European Commission shows that even within the borders of Europe, attitudes to privacy vary sharply between countries.

Running to 330 pages, the report is a major piece of work, and drills down into the way different nations treat their privacy on the Internet, and who they think should be responsible for it. For example, the Spaniards, more than any other nation, believe the state should enforce the protection of their information on social networking sites, while very few Irish take that view.

But what is private information? Attitutudes vary according to age, social class, and of course between countries. The British, for instance, have a reputation for secrecy about their financial affairs, but it turns out the Danes, the Dutch and the Irish come top when it come to keeping financial data personal. The Poles, by contrast, seem much more relaxed about people knowing how much they earn, and yet when it comes to disclosing their home address or their name, they guard that information more than any other nation.

When it comes to medical history, you’d expect every country to score highly, but no. The Irish, again, come out top for protecting medical records, while Poland comes bottom.

Poland’s next-door neighbour Germany is often cited as the country with the most comprehensive privacy laws, and indeed it scores quite highly across the board. But while the Germans do not top the list when it comes to medical or financial data, they appear to care much more than any other country about protecting their photographs, their mobile phone number, work history, friends’ names, tastes and opinions, and even their hobbies.

The figures make fascinating reading, and it is clear that many countries’ attitudes to privacy are shaped by their history. The Poles lived under Nazi oppression followed by Soviet rule for many years, so it’s little wonder that they put so much value on their name and address as personal information. But history doesn’t explain everything - the British score higher than average in every single category of information, and not far behind Poland when it comes to protecting their home address. That could be because of the high level of Internet usage, and therefore a higher level of security awareness.

However, the report found that the more people understood how to manage their information and data on the Internet, the more likely they were to take control and apply privacy settings, for instance, in social networking sites. People who didn’t apply privacy settings, it turned out, often had no idea they could do so, or they just trusted the site to look after them.

Ignorance continues to be the greatest barrier to security, and education continues to be the best way to let people protect the information they choose to value.