14 DAY TRIAL // Online security is of utmost importance, so it goes without saying that most Americans are concerned about how they protect themselves when on the Internet. That being said, they do very little to protect themselves.
A new survey from the Pew Research Center conducted on 1,040 US adults indicates that 41% have shared their online account passwords with friends and family members, which is pretty much the first thing you are told not to do.
Another 39% claim they use the same password or very similar passwords for most of their online accounts. This puts them at high risk should one of the accounts get hacked or if one of the services they use gets infiltrated by hackers. One good example for this is the Yahoo data breach where 1 billion people had their account data exposed. If those people used the same passwords elsewhere, those accounts could also be compromised.
One-quarter of those interviewed admitted that the passwords they use are weaker than they’d like, but they are so because they’re easier to remember. However, about half of Americans believe that their personal information is less secure now than it was five years ago. This is in direct correlation with the fact that Americans lack faith in various public and private institutions to protect their data. Of course, the many data breaches that have affected online companies in the past few years haven’t helped much in restoring faith in them.
Widespread data theft
The survey goes deeper into the issue and unveils that 64% of US adults have been impacted by different types of data theft. For instance, 41% discovered fraudulent charges on their credit cards, while 35% have been notified that some information had been compromised. Another 16% admit to their email accounts being taken over, while 13% said the same about their social media accounts.
Mobile security is also forgotten by Americans. 28% admit that they don’t even have a lock screen on their phone or any other security feature to stop others from accessing their devices. The use of unsecured public WiFi networks is also extremely high, with 54% of users picking these over their data plans.
Divided on encryption
When it comes to online encryption settings, Americans are divided. 46% of those interviewed have said they believe the government should be able to access encrypted communications in their investigations. This is something that has come up time and time again, including in one prominent case where the FBI spewed with Apple over the phone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter. In that particular case, Apple said they couldn’t do anything even if they wanted to because of the way the phone itself was encrypted, which made the data unattainable.