Most In US Have False Sense of Online Security

BaCa sends along a link from Net-Security on a study of attitudes among Americans about the security of their PCs, versus their actual vulnerability. "More than half of computer users who think they are protected against online threats like spyware, viruses, and hackers actually have inadequate or no online protection, according to an independent research study conducted for Verizon... While 92 percent of participants thought they were safe, the scans revealed that 59 percent were actually vulnerable to a variety of online dangers. Ninety-four percent of those surveyed said they would find it helpful to be able to diagnose or check their online security status on a regular basis to make sure their PCs were safe."

Comments

You could always

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust Google to protect you, they've been doing all sorts of anti phishing/badware removal lately. Clearly more could be done though.

Promising trends ahead

[The_Abortionist]

Regardless of what the users do, we should be seeing better security all around based on 2 trends:

1- Rise in Windows Vista use
2- Decrease to near 0 in the number of Linux home computers as the idea of Linux on the Desktop continues to unravel.

I think that the years of spambots and so on are becoming numbered. And that's not even mentioning Microsoft's efforts in the field of email authentication and security :)

My computer is secure

[painandgreed]

My sense of security isn't false, I have a Mac. (No matter how true that is, yes, that was supposed to be moderated as 'funny'.)