A new study of American's attitude about online security by the Pew Research Center has found that people are concerned about the risks of being hacked, but they don't do much in order to prevent it.
People Don't Do Enough To Protect Against Hackers
According to Yahoo Tech News, the Pew Research Center has published on Thursday, Jan. 26 the results of they survey on U.S. internet users' attitude about online security. The nonpartisan Washington thinks tank's study surveyed about one thousand U.S. adults. The study found that despite the fact that people are concerned over the safety of their online data, they do not do much to protect it.
Pew associate research director Aaron Smith said that their study found a widespread hesitancy to use free tools to do something about online security and they are mostly uninformed with regards to cyber security. While a majority of Americans reported no harm in the data breach categories covered in the survey's questions, 35 percent of the participants had received a data-breach notification and 41 percent had spotted fraudulent purchase on a credit card.
Only 13 percent of internet users surveyed had a social media account hijacked and 16 percent had an email account hacked. However, looking at the overall picture, 64 percent of respondents had become acquainted with data theft at some level. Even tax-refund fraud and other more serious cases of identity theft were reported by 6 percent of respondents to the survey.
About 49 percent of respondents felt less confident about the security of their personal data than five years ago, thinking that things are getting worse. Around 70 percent expected to see a cyber attack on public infrastructure in the next five years even before recent revelations of Russian hacking.
Easy Online Security Measures
Internet users are not helpless against threats like phishing and malware. But the Pew survey suggests many Americans don't event bother to take basic online security steps. For instance, in managing passwords 39 percent of the respondents to the survey said that they are reusing passwords across many accounts and that 25 percent are picking simpler passwords.
A password management app like LastPass, Dashlane or 1Password to store your logins generate complex passwords as needed, and encrypt them until you unlock them with a master password or a fingerprint. An easy way to increase the password security is to use a password-management app like 1Password, Dashlane or LastPass to generate complex passwords as needed, store logins and encrypt them until users unlock them with a fingerprint or a master password. However, just 12 percent of the participants to the survey said they use a password manager and only 3 percent use it as their primary password tool.
Besides just simply using passwords, a more effective way to keep safe online is using two-step verification. This method is making a stolen password worthless because it takes the extra precaution to confirm a login with a one-time code sent to the user's phone. According to Pew, around 52 percent of respondents employed the two-step verification measure on at least one account.
According to Creative Bloq, another simple online security measure is ensuring you keep all software up to date on your website. Only up to date software can ensure security protection of a website. This applies to both the software running on the website and the server operating system.
