Pew: Americans Know They're Getting Hacked, Do Nothing About It

[Guest]

Pew's study focused on a few key factors: How many people have been affected by data breaches, how do they attempt to defend themselves, and how much does the typical American worry about encryption and other protections?

Pew: Americans Know They're Getting Hacked, Do Nothing About It : Read more

 

[jdlech]

Theres really not a whole lot anybody can do to prevent being hacked. You install your firewall, your AV, your anti-malware, you back up regularly. Then you sit back and watch it happen anyway.
One of the NSA memos that was on wikileaks says it all. When Congress ordered the NSA to help private industry create the strongest cyber security protocols possible back in the 1980s, the NSA immediately set about to sabotage all computer security. They deliberately sabotaged every security protocol since the 80s. And now we're supposed to think they're not responsible for all the security holes these days? They may not be doing all the hacking, but they sure had a hand in many of the holes hackers are using these days. You think they learned their lesson? You think they're not doing it anymore? Only a fool would trust anything the NSA says or does anymore.
For my part, I remain as anonymous as possible. I refuse to use social media and only give out throwaway email addresses. Yes, I use credit cards online, but they're prepaid throwaways and often depleted after two or three uses. I refuse to link accounts to one another. That cuts me off from posting at a lot of forums. But not getting targeted is more important than expressing myself.

 

[kittle]

Id say most people dont know HOW to protect themselves aside from just changing their online banking password.

Add to that the pain in the backside it creates when you change a password, and then forget what you changed it to, and it becomes too much bother, so its skipped, pushed under the carpet and generally ignored.

At least until it REALLY starts to hurt: bank balance drained, car repossessed, home foreclosed on.. etc. but we dont hear much about those cases

 

[nutjob2]

Theres really not a whole lot anybody can do to prevent being hacked. You install your firewall, your AV, your anti-malware, you back up regularly. Then you sit back and watch it happen anyway.
One of the NSA memos that was on wikileaks says it all. When Congress ordered the NSA to help private industry create the strongest cyber security protocols possible back in the 1980s, the NSA immediately set about to sabotage all computer security. They deliberately sabotaged every security protocol since the 80s. And now we're supposed to think they're not responsible for all the security holes these days? They may not be doing all the hacking, but they sure had a hand in many of the holes hackers are using these days. You think they learned their lesson? You think they're not doing it anymore? Only a fool would trust anything the NSA says or does anymore.
For my part, I remain as anonymous as possible. I refuse to use social media and only give out throwaway email addresses. Yes, I use credit cards online, but they're prepaid throwaways and often depleted after two or three uses. I refuse to link accounts to one another. That cuts me off from posting at a lot of forums. But not getting targeted is more important than expressing myself.

Your tinfoil hat is on too tight.

 

[nutjob2]

Why are stolen credit card numbers even mentioned? The fraudulent charges don't cost the card holders anything and it not the users who are losing control of credit card numbers, nor is it within their power to control them. The fact that banks have fought tooth and nail to delay chip cards and have still weakened them by not requiring pins and have created an online strategy for credit cards speaks loudly about the whole issue.

 

[rantoc]

Bet the conclusion is password 123 is good and clicking on all links in suspicious mail is good right? The user is the weak link most of the time and if gullible its the perfect target.

 

[velocityg4]

People would take more steps to protect themselves. But it needs to be much easier. Websites should have a consistent method for logging in so password managers work 100% of the time. That they work consistently. To help password manager's websites should use a standardized login page, password update page and account creation page. So, password managers can always login and can always know to save a new user/password.

Then the password managers need to keep working the same way all the time. If you have to, fire everyone in involved in the user interface. It should never change. You can change the technologies behind the scenes to make it more secure but the UI should always be the same. All the UI department should do is fix the UI when it breaks due to a change behind the scenes.

We are talking about people where you need to tell them to click on the beach ball (Chrome) not the blue E (Internet Explorer) for safer web browsing. If that beach ball disappears they think it is gone forever. Even if it is still installed they will never get it back.

These are people where you look in the downloads folder. Just about every file has been downloaded ten times. Either they finally realized it was downloaded or just gave up thinking the link was broken.

If you want them to improve security. You must make it easy for them to do so. Otherwise it will never happen. An inconsistent user experience makes a tool unusable. Most people have no grasp of what a computer is doing or how they are interacting with the software. They memorize a procedure. If that procedure changes, they are thrown for a loop. Which is why I stress the need for consistency.

There would have been no resistance to Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10, &c. If MS just stuck with the Windows XP interface. If they just updated all the security and technology behind the scenes but kept the GUI the same. Most people would have been happy.

As for their opinions on encryption. They don't know anything about it. Each of those pole question should also include the response choice of "I don't understand this computer stuff". In which case the answers would be 1% for strong encryption, 0.1% against, 98.9% doesn't understand.

 

[The Reebo]

"52% of respondents use two-factor authentication on at least some of their accounts"

I can only assume that one of the following applies:

A) The people surveyed think that "Two-factor" means you have to give your email address AND your password
B) The survey is hopelessly skewed towards the high end of tech savvy.


I simply refuse to believe that 52% of Americans know what two-factor authentication is, let alone use it.