Is your data telling you the whole story?
With all the high-profile data breaches that happened in just the past year (Facebook, Capital One, Marriott International, etc.), we wanted to better understand – do Americans feel under siege and are they now more hesitant to share their personal information online with any companies? To answer that we ran an internal survey in the US, among 500 respondents, 18+, to understand their experiences with online security.
Our data show that Americans are not really fazed by the mass data breaches, nor do they seem willing to stop sharing personal information online.
In total, we found that only about a third of Americans claim to have experienced some form of an online security breach that resulted in exposure or theft of their personal information. Considering all the high-profile breaches, in just this year alone, it looks like many Americans’ behaviors were not dramatically impacted by this news or they just came to consider these hacks as no big deal and a natural part of doing anything online.
13% of respondents indicated they mostly experienced security breaches while shopping online, and 11% when using a social media account.
Given their carefree attitude towards data breaches, it is not surprising that almost half of Americans (45%) feel that their personal information is safe online. Practically all, (99%) have at some point provided at least some piece of personal information online - from the most common like date of birth, gender, address and name to the more sensitive such as social security and passport numbers.
In addition, a fifth or more of Americans claim that they do not feel uncomfortable providing any of that information online, with 19% not feeling specifically uncomfortable providing their SSI online!
However, most Americans (92%) have taken at least one measure to protect their information online. The most common measures put in place are also what experts say are the minimum we can do to protect our personal information:
- Installing anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, or a firewall on my devices (63%)
- Use unique passwords on all accounts (61%)
- With only 16% claiming they pay for an identity protection service and 37% never connecting to public WIFI.
So, are all Americans careless with their personal information? If we looked at the data in total, we may draw this conclusion. However, if we cut our data by the 3 generational age groups, we get a more real and compelling story.
By separating out three generations of Americans {defined as Millennials (18-34), Gen X (35-54) and Baby Boomers (55+)} we can compare their attitudes, behaviors and reactions to online information security and data breaches – and decipher which generation is driving the numbers with their ‘relaxed’ approach to data security.
Our data indicates that Millennials are the most careless with their personal information, while Boomers tend to be extra cautious
When prompted to see how safe respondents felt their information was online, just over half of Millennials (51%) reported that they felt it was safe – compared to 46% of Gen X and 38% of Boomers. This difference may be explained by the cultural separation between the age groups, in regard to growing up with and without this level of technology.
Although wary of the consequences of offering personalinformation online, Boomers are also active participants on the internet with roughly9 out of 10 Boomers having entered their name, date of birth and home address online.However, Boomers are much less likely to share the more sensitive pieces ofinformation, such as social security number (39%) and driver’s license number(29%). Millennials have much less of an issue giving out this high priorityinformation, with the majority (54%) having shared their social security numberonline and 44% sharing their drivers license number.
The younger generation is typically considered the more techsavvy of the bunch, yet only half of Millennials and Gen Xers have installed anti-virussoftware, anti-spyware or firewalls on their devices. Meanwhile, the Boomersare all armored up with 8 out of 10 Boomers having installed anti-virussoftware, anti-spyware or firewalls.
Between their general lack of concern for sharing personal information online and not protecting their devices – Millennials are incidentally the generation giving Americans this carefree reputation. Not to mention they make the perfect target for those trying to expose/thieve personal information through the internet. Just under half (44%) have experienced an online breach, while only 1 out of 4 Boomers have ever had such a violation.
Utilizing crosstabs as an analysis tool can provide a more complete picture add depth and different dimensions to the narrative your data is trying to tell. Our story began with the blanket statement that Americans are careless with their personal information. Then we broke out the data into generations using crosstabs, and it morphed into a more distinct and tangible piece of intelligence – Millennial Americans are less concerned with and more susceptible to online data breaches.
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