Tyler Close wrote:
> Heikki, can you point to any user survey that shows that the typical
> user has no fear of money being stolen from their online bank account?

You are missing the point.

If you ask people: do you fear money being stolen from your online bank
account, the majority may well say yes.

But if you ask those same people questions that show how they deal with
security issues in every day life, their actions actually say they don't
care, or don't think they would be a likely victim, or they think all
the systems are secure as they are.

There have been studies done at universities (I have a hard time coming
up with links at the moment) where students were asked about there
habits regarding their debit cards and passwords to certain online
systems (among other things). A study found that a large percentage of
students were confident to give the PIN number to their friends and give
them their debit card so that they could go and withdraw some money for
them. Yet they can be concerned somebody might steal money from them
using their debit cards. Students that never change their password, even
after sharing it with friends, can be concerned about online security.
Students can share the contents of all the files on their computer to
the whole university network, even though their computer may contain
sensitive information about them, and be concerned somebody posts nude
pictures of themselves on the internet. And so on and so forth. The
percentages I saw were surprisingly large, in some cases more than 50%
for questionable practices. (I saw a presentation about a study at
Dartmouth College, so you could try searching with that.)

So to summarize it again: people can be concerned about security, but
may not take any action to protect themselves.

-- 
  Heikki Toivonen
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