14 DAY TRIAL // A recent research conducted by TeleSign in the United States and involving 1,300 adults reveals that no less than 51 percent of consumers suffered some kind of security incident in the last 12 months, including here a stolen password or a personal account breached by hackers.
The survey reveals that no less than 31 percent of the consumers believe that their online life is worth $100,000 or even more (some even said priceless), and this is one of the reasons they are targeted by hackers.
“The value of online life increases with age. Online accounts and their associated assets are valued at $100,000 or more by only 16% of Millennials, almost doubling to 30% of GenXers, then jumping to 46% of Baby Boomers and 50% of Silent Generation consumers,” the study shows.
Same password on multiple websites
What’s a bit more worrying is that 71 percent of the respondents admitted to using the same password on more than one website, and this increases the risk of breaches for their accounts. Recently, it was reported that the UK National Lottery was hacked after cybercriminals discovered a password that was reused on other websites and managed to infiltrate into the main servers.
“The average number of accounts protected by the same password is nine accounts for Millennials, six for all other generations combined and seven for all respondents,” TeleSign says.
Most consumers have less than 5 passwords to protect all their accounts, and half of them haven’t even changed their password in the last five years or longer.
On the good side, the use of two-factor authentication has increased between 2015 and 2016 by 18 percent, and now 46 percent of the consumers are using it.
In case you’re wondering why users do not configure two-factor authentication for their accounts, 35 percent of the consumers didn’t even know this feature existed, while 27 percent of the respondents say they don’t know what this actually is. 23 percent have said they don’t know how to turn it on.
