Online security is of the highest importance, so it goes without saying that most of the Americans are concerned about how they protect their online self on the internet. This being said, they do a very little to protect themselves according to a study.
A survey from the Pew Research Center has conducted a study on 1,040 US adults only to find that 41% have shared their online account passwords with friends or family members, which is pretty much the basic thing you are not supposed to do.
Other 39% claim they have used the same password or similar passwords for most of their online accounts. That puts them at very high risk as hack of one of the accounts means their online presence is pretty much messed up. One very good example for this is Yahoo data breach in which 1 billion people had their account data exposed. If you are one of those who used the same passwords elsewhere, expect those accounts gone.
One-quarter of those who are interviewed have admitted that the passwords they use are very weak than they like, but they are the way they are because they are easy to remember.
However, nearly half of Americans believe that their personal information is not secure now than it was five years ago. This is in-direct correlation with fact that Americans lack the faith in various private and public institutions to protect their data for them. Of course, many data breaches that have affected online companies in past few years have not helped much in restoring the faith in them.
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.
