Americans Worried About Account Hacks, But Can’t Be Bothered With Extra Security

According to a new report, by Harris Interactive on behalf of Imperium, 79% of Americans have stated that they are worried about their accounts, for various online services, being hacked/compromised yet 75% of them say they have never used two factor authentication and 27% of them say they just cannot be bothered to do it because it is inconvenient.

The report revealed some interesting things such as:

• 79% of respondents were worried about their emails being hacked
• 71% of respondents were worried about their bank account being compromised
• 55% of respondents were worried about their social media being hacked
• 75% of respondents had never used two factor authentication
• 27% of respondents said they didn’t use it because it was inconvenient or they didn’t want to disclose their phone number
• 39% of respondents blamed hacks on websites for a lack of security features
• 37% of respondents blamed hacks on weak passwords
• 37% of respondents had been victims of a phishing attack
• 26% of respondents had their accounts for an online service compromised
• 20% of respondents had their social media credentials stolen
• 5% of respondents stated that a loss or stolen phone led to unwanted disclosure of information

So the message from this survey is clear, Americans are aware of the risks, and many of them have fallen victim to hacks but no one really wants to take responsibility for it. It is surely much easier to blame the websites/companies involved than it is to take some initiative and used a strong password or enable two factor authentication in your account settings.

Image courtesy of Imperium