14 DAY TRIAL // A recent study shows that almost half of the home internet users in the United Kingdom have been the victims of some sort of cyber attack.
The research performed by YouGov and commissioned by TalkTalk has revealed some interesting figures related to cybercrimes and the casualties they make among the inhabitants of U.K homes.
It seems as in the past year, almost 90% of the emails sent contained some sort of spam messages in the form of unwanted advertisements or even malware.
Identity theft is also at an all-time high as 700,000 attempts were recorded in the first three months of 2011 alone.
Reports show that while most of the subjects consider computer protection to be highly important, many of them don't have the necessary skills to secure their online possessions and in the process, 10% rely only on their instinct instead of professional software solutions.
Children also play an important part in the statistics regarding threats against internet-enabled households. When confronted, 23% of parents admit that their young ones downloaded some sort of virus, while 5% are aware of situations where their kids gave out personal information.
More precisely, 420,000 children aged between 6 and 17 possibly shared private data with unknown people in an online environment. While most parents fear their safety, it seems that a majority fails to control the activities performed on a computer by their offspring.
ISPreview provides the exact list of threats and their impact on everyday internauts.
Top 6 UK Cyber threats: 1. Adware - 34% 2. Trojan horses, spyware - 14% 3. Viruses - 14% 4. Worms - 5% 5. Identity theft, phishing - 4% 6. Hacking - 3% (None of these - 55%)
A separate publication made by the Office for National Statistics showed in August that 45% of subjects connect to the information superhighway from a mobile phone and that wireless hotspots have grown in popularity in the last 12 months, reaching 4.9 million users.