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Survey shows lax payment security with web users

Cape Town – People making online payments care little about security, a survey has revealed.

According to security firm Kaspersky Lab, a fraction over half of internet users would verify the authenticity of a website prior to making a payment.

“Only 51% of respondents globally said they verify the authenticity of a site. Twenty one percent of those surveyed use a virtual keyboard to protect their passwords from interception by malware, while 20% check their security solution is working properly to ensure the payment is secure from any outside interference,” Kaspersky said of its survey of 18 000 internet users.

The survey asked participants to enter their details into a fictitious banking sites and 5% selected sites with misspelt names, suggesting that they could be fooled by typical phishing scams.

The security firm found that just 24% of internet users were able to readily identify phishing sites – sites criminals use to scrape personal user information.

No security action

“These figures reinforce what has long been observed that many users still are not only endangering themselves and their money but also the banking and payment system businesses they use,” said Ross Hogan, global head of the Fraud Prevention Division at Kaspersky Lab.

The survey found that 29% would take no security action before entering payment information online, though 11% said they would switch to incognito or private browsing, 4% employed an anonymiser, and 7% would enter and delete information to “confuse viruses”.

Hogan said that attitudes toward security can have a negative impact on companies beyond resulting in financial losses.

“Dealing with incidents, even if they are caused by inexperienced users, can consume considerable resources and have a negative impact on a company’s reputation. User confidence in companies doing everything possible to protect them from online fraud imposes a great deal of responsibility.”


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