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74% Internet Users Afraid of Hacking

The study has been carried out in India, where Internet users were asked whether they are scared of hacking their social networking account, loss of personal data or credit card fraud. The result was almost 3/4 responding positively to the first option, which is much more than those fearing of losing personal information in the cyber world.


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Around 74% of the respondents confirmed that they are afraid of their social networking account being hacked. Meanwhile, the percentage of people scared of losing personal data was only 16%. Moreover, only 5% said they fear credit card fraud, according to Microsoft India’s study.

The study in question has been hosted on the company’s “Windows and Me” page on Facebook, where it received responses from more than a thousand of Internet users. The results were quite interesting: for example, almost a half of the respondents said they spent about 5 hours online every day. Their favourite activity turned out to be connecting with people on the Internet, because 40% of the respondents admitted they usually spend these 5 hours on social networking services. Among other popular activities there were research (around 35%) and entertainment (22%).

The Microsoft study found out that almost a quarter of the respondents (more than 23%) said they’ve been victims of cyber attacks. Among them, 67% complained that they had suffered loss of personal information, and 19% of users witnessed their email accounts being hacked. Meanwhile, the study points out that the large number of hacker attacks made people more aware of Internet security threats and therefore realizing the need for Internet security and anti-virus solutions.

The study revealed that although about 90% of respondents have anti-virus installed on their computers, most of them (62%) believe that their job is done once they install it. This means that the Internet users are still not completely aware of the repercussions of hacker attacks.

Pankaj Ukey, the Microsoft India CEO, admitted that in a whole, people are getting more aware of security threats they are exposed to in the digital world and are looking for security solutions working in the back-end and letting them use Internet without any worries or interruptions.

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