I haven’t seen it discussed anywhere, but Jupiter did a follow-up survey to their report on cookie deletion. The goal was to give some context around the profile of the cookie deleter. While the summary from the report is that the longer you’ve been on-line, the more likely you are to delete cookies, there’s a table in the report that clearly shows a need for education on cookies:

The trend that emerges indicates that older you are (in years, not in tenure on-line), the more you pay attention to stories about cookies, and the more you consider cookies an invasion of privacy. Coincidence? I doubt it. I think the doom and gloom reporting by the popular media actually feeds this. (Also note the general trend that while older Web users pay more attention to the stories, they report a lower understanding of how cookies work and what they are good for).

The education/advocacy sounds like something Safecount is up to.

Source: Jupiter Research Concept Report