Almost 90% of Americans feel safe online
Users' confidence does not match up with percentage of properly protected users.
Research by StopBadware.org shows that 88% of Americans say they feel safe online, despite the current
threats of phishing, spyware and other kinds of badware.
Of survey participants who were
under 30 - the generation that grew up with computers and the Internet - nearly 50% even expressed feeling 'very safe'.
"What we have here is an Internet security paradox," says Maxim Weinstein of StopBadware.org, a collaboration of
the universities of Harvard and Oxford and some big IT companies. "Americans see themselves as safe online, even as we
see an ongoing trend of organized criminal elements using the Internet to target unsuspecting users."
Weinstein will testify at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today about how to better educate users about the
dangers of phishing. According to Consumer Reports, identity theft through phishing cost American computer
users a total of $2.1 billion last year.
That there is room for improvement and that many users might be too confident about their online safety was shown
in a recent study by McAfee and the National Cyber Security
Alliance (NCSA) which showed that only 22% of Americans have taken adequate protection by using a
firewall and updating their anti-virus and anti-spyware regularly.
More can be found at StopBadware.org here.
1 April 2008
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ftc, safety, stopbadware.org, survey.
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