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42% of Web Users Sneak Onto Others' Online Accounts

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-are-you-doing-there dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In an online survey, 42 percent of Internet users admitted to logging into other people's email and social networking accounts without their knowledge. The poll doesn't ask if passwords were found, granted, or stolen — which would make for further interesting results. The write-up summarizing the results defines the respondents as part of an "educated tech-readership" and questions the ethics of logging onto someone else's account, and whether those differ depending on the person and relationship."

4 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. (no subject) by woodchip · · Score: 5, Insightful

    or "auto-saved" in their web browser.

  2. Sharing passwords by geekgirlandrea · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It just seems bizarre to me how many people think it's normal to give out their password to family/friends/partners/whatever. I've never revealed a password to anyone in my life and never will, and my really important ones get changed regularly. Is that really so terribly unusual?

    1. Re:Sharing passwords by Eivind · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's also the possibility that you actually trust someone. My wife knows the passwords for some of my stuff, simply out of convenience. It -does- happen that she needs some stuff (say pictures) from my laptop and I'm out. The home-partition is encrypted, she knows the password.

      I don't see the big deal. I didn't encrypt it to protect it from HER. I encrypted it so that stuff on there stays private even if say a burglar steals the laptop.

      Yeah, this means if she likes she can dig around in my firefox-history or whatever. So what ? I trust her. Certainly, it's possible that she'll betray that trust at some point. That's always a risk when trusting people. If that happens though, the privacy of my emails will be the least of my worries.

      "Lost my wife, and my gmail-password" -- somehow I don't think the gmail-password is going to be the biggest deal in that context.

  3. Complete nonsense by e2d2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm calling bullshit on this one. 42%? yeah right. Maybe parents checking up on their kid's habits but even then I can't see almost _half_ of the world's internet users using another person's account.

    But that's the thing, the poll doesn't infer that it's all web users, just people that visit that website. The write up is incorrect.

    This is so lame I'm having a hard time not laughing. Is this the best we can get? How does this tripe pass the test to be posted on slashdot, and not in the idle section?