In the age of the Internet, people are taking a very different view of their privacy rights than they used to. A new study that was released earlier this week showed that more than half of all Americans believe that we really are in the era of “big brother.” A survey from the University of Southern California showed that the number of large-scale government surveillance operations that have come to light have played a large role in how people view their online privacy rights.

The survey found that a large number (35 percent) of people understand that things have changed for the worse, though they believe the public should just get over it. While more than a third said people needed to just deal with the situation, a growing number of respondents are concerned about the supposed increase in incidents in which the government is checking on their online activities. Even more people are also worried that private businesses are going to be doing the same kind of intruding.

Forty-three percent of respondents said they were worried about the government checking out their activities. That is a 5-percent jump from 2010. Fifty-seven percent of the people in the survey said they were worried about businesses accessing their activities – a 9 percent increase from three years ago.

Pew (News - Alert) Research did its own similar study a year ago and found that almost 75 percent of people believed that private businesses were collecting too much data about consumers. Sixty-four percent had the same concerns about the federal government. It is these kinds of concerns that will likely leave bills like CISPA dead on arrival. Will Internet users start changing the way they access the web because of these concerns as well?

The survey found that despite privacy concerns, 86 percent of Americans are online, up from 82 percent in 2010. More than half of those people access the Internet from a mobile device. Texting could be the next big battlefield over privacy, as 82 percent of people say they regularly send texts. That number is a huge jump from 2010, when just 62 percent claimed they texted. It’s a monumental leap from 2007, when just 31 percent used text messaging.