Consumer Reports has published results of its “State of the Net” survey in the June 2010 magazine. Bottom line: there are twice as many people using social media as a year ago and a lot of them aren’t very security aware.
The study of 2,000 households was done online in January.
A few of the results:
— 40 percent posted full birth date on their social media page, opening themselves up for identity theft
— About 25 percent of those households with a Facebook account weren’t aware of Facebook privacy controls or didn’t choose to use them.
— Nine percent of social network users experienced a malware infection, scam, identity theft or harassment.
CR said: “Overall, we estimate that cybercrime cost American consumers $4.5 billion over the past two years. And it caused them to replace 2.1 million computers.”
Web news piece about the survey here.
Their web news piece on the survey includes links to a good brief security how-to: “7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook”
Tom Kelchner